Violet, Dash, and Quigley climbed the chimney passage, which he called a Vertical Flame Diversion.
"You've learned a lot in a short time, Quigley," said Violet admiringly.
"That's the advantage of attending briefings with Duncan," Quigley said. "He has a photographic memory and he passes memories on to Isadora and me."
Violet and Dash nodded. They remembered how useful that skill had been at Prudence Preparatory, where their teachers had expected memorization of meaningless messages and metric measurements.
"What's this mission?" Dash asked. "Did you know we were going to be here?"
"Only if the villains captured you," Quigley answered. "The rumor was that there might be an attack on the V.F.D. headquarters in the Valley of the Four Drifts."
"What's at this headquarters?" Dash asked.
"In the old days, the Volunteer Freedom Defenders recruited supers when they were very young. They took them from their parents and brought them here for intensive training, not just in fighting, but in cultural and scientific skills. Your folks and my mother must have grown up here," said Quigley. "The place is mostly deserted these days, but sometimes members keep important things here, or hide secret messages."
The reached the top the the vertical climb and found themselves in a rocky passage. Quigley took out a sheet of blank paper, moved his finger over it, and an instant later had produced a map.
"Down this hall to the left is an area for sled and snowsuit storage. To the right is the Vernacularly Fastened Door, which leads to the headquarter's kitchen," Quigley said.
There was a computer terminal hooked up to a sealed metal door. Quigley pressed the enter key and a prompt came up. "PASSWORD: What is the central theme of Anna Karenina?"
Quigley pointed to the prompt and asked the others, "Do you have any ideas about this?"
"Anna Karenina? Who's that? Never heard of her," said Dash.
"I think it's a Tolstoy novel, but I don't know the theme," said Violet. "Even if I did, there must be a million different ways to say it."
"Ok," said Quigley. "This is an emergency, so I'm going to do it the hard way."
He placed his index finger close to the surface of the door and a focused beam of energy appeared at his fingertip. He moved it in a wide circle around the middle of the door, cutting a hole in it.
"Wow, that's a cool power!" said Dash.
"Aren't you afraid that someone might be on the other side of a door sometime and they might get hurt?" Violet asked.
"My beam doesn't cut living flesh," Quigley explained.
The three climbed through the hole, only to find a smoldering ruin, a frozen waterfall, and a mostly-frozen lake leading to the polluted stream they had seen earlier. Now the source of the pollution was clear: ashes from an enormous fire which had destroyed the entire headquarters.
"Hello? Anyone here?" Violet called.
There was no reply.
"We're too late," said Quigley. "The attack's already happened."
"Maybe Count Buddy is meeting on top of the mountain with whoever did it," said Violet. "He said he had unfinished business here."
"What happened with Count Buddy?" asked Quigley. "You're sure he's up there?"
Dash and Violet filled Quigley in on their adventures since they had last seen him.
"Let's sneak up there tonight and scope things out," said Quigley.
"We have to be careful," said Violet. "Our parents and Jack-Jack are hostages. Why don't just you and I go?"
"What about me?" demanded Dash.
"You can stay here and look for clues," said Violet. "It's too risky for all of us to go."
Dash sulked a bit, but he agreed.
Violet and Quigley began to climb the slippery, slushy, slope of the waterfall. Quigley led the way, because he could cut handholds and footholds in the ice and rock with his energy power.
Halfway up, they came to a rocky ledge. Quigley carved it a little wider and said "Let's rest here for a minute. I have some carrots in my backpack we can eat to get our energy back."
They sat together on the ledge, close enough that the sides of their arms touched. Violet felt her heart beating faster.
"It's a beautiful view from up here, isn't it?" she said, looking out over the valley.
"Very beautiful," said Quigley, but he wasn't looking at the view.
At this point in the story, I believe we should give Violet and Quigley a little privacy, so I will not write any more of what happened between these two on the ledge, only that they resumed their climb with small secret smiles.
They found Jack-Jack sleeping in a casserole dish by the plane. Count Buddy's gang seemed to be asleep also.
Violet gently shook Jack-Jack's shoulder. "Jack-Jack, wake up! Come on, we're getting you out of here."
Jack-Jack shook his head, "Gostages," he said, meaning "Mom and Dad and Macroburst will be killed if I try to escape. I'll have to stay until we find a better way."
Quigley asked Jack-Jack, "Did you hear the villains say anything about burning the V.F.D. Headquarters? Did they take anything?"
"Yop. Gnippt File, no shugbowl," said Jack-Jack.
"He said: Yes, they got the Snippet File, but not the sugar bowl," Violet translated for Quigley. "What's the sugar bowl?"
"Dunno," said Jack-Jack.
"I remember the file we found in the Library of Records said that secrets were transferred to the s.b., so that must be the sugar bowl," Violet said.
Quigley said, "Jack-Jack, if you can't leave yet, would you try to find out as much as you can about the sugar bowl and the villain's plans?"
"Jamebond," said Jack-Jack, meaning "I agree to spy as much as I can."
Violet and Quigley climbed back down the slope, determined that somehow tomorrow they would find a way to rescue Jack-Jack, the Parr parents, and Macroburst.
They found Dash looking into the refrigerator, which had somehow survived the ravages of the fire.
"Did you find any clues?" Violet asked him.
"I was looking for something to eat," said Dash. "There's not much in here but condiments and fresh dill."
"Very Fresh Dill!" exclaimed Quigley. "There's a message in the refrigerator. According to what I learned about Verbal Fridge Dialogs, there will be a jam jar, with the initials of the person the message is for written in the jam."
"Yeah, I found a jam jar," said Dash.
"Were there initials in it?" Violet asked.
"I saw a big letter 'J' and some other letter I don't remember," said Dash.
"Where's the jar now?" asked Quigley.
"It won't do any good. I ate the jam," said Dash.
"Oh no!" said Violet. "How could you?"
"I was hungry," said Dash. "All we had this morning was that stupid corn-on-the-cob."
"What else was in there?" Quigley asked.
"Five olives in a jar," said Dash. "I ate them, too."
"That means the next big V.F.D. meeting is coming on Thursday," Quigley interpreted. "It'll be at the Last Safe Place, but they didn't tell us where that is."
"Here's a bottle of ketchup," said Dash, "I didn't eat that."
"Look at the ingredients label," said Violet. "It refers to the last quatrain of the eleventh stanza of 'The Garden of Proserpine'." The ingredient 'sugar' is underlined, too."
"That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea," quoted Quigley.
"How did you know that?" asked Dash.
"They made us memorize lots of poetry for secret messages," Quigley said. "Thanks to Duncan's photographic memories, I knew it."
"I think it means the sugar bowl was thrown into the river to keep it safe," said Violet.
"I wonder who 'J' is?" Quigley said. "Josephine, Jerome, Jock... probably Jock. The person who wrote it might not know he's dead."
The children slept in the ruined headquarters that night, their minds still spinning with the mysteries of the V.F.D. and the refrigerator message.