2~
The group was led through the brightly lit, but narrow, and almost mazelike corridors of the stadium's near-subterranean clubhouse. Their escort had brought them halfway, and then returned to the surface arena, leaving a single guard to lead them the rest of the way.
Although, with the Questoid up front, it offered good opportunities for any of them to peel away from the convoy and try to escape, past experience with the robots' speed, strength, and dogged tenacity, continuously dispelled such thoughts.
Reaching the rear area of the complex, the group could see the Questoid turn to a closed, wooden door in the side of the hallway. Opening it, he gestured for them to enter the room.
Past the threshold, they saw that it was the foyer of a large players' lounge. Six plush chairs sat in the center of the hardwood floor, with a couch off to one corner, and a padded, wrap-around bench encircling the lounge's rear. Pictures of players, shelves of sports memorabilia, and a single water cooler completed the decor, and they were not alone.
Seven people sat, forlornly on the circular bench, two in matching, orange-highlighted uniforms, and the other five in regular civvies, but with small white bags between them.
Two people sat in the central chairs, while one person sat alone on the couch in the corner. As the group walked in, and the robot left them, locking the door behind it, it became a reunion of sorts to all but Velma, when they recognized who sat before them.
"Flim Flam, you little so-and-so!" Daisy exclaimed, as if they weren't in a possibly terminal situation.
"Hey, Daze."
"How did you get here?"
"How else? The professor," the student smirked. "I tell ya. Nothing but trouble, everywhere he goes."
"Hardly," the dour Hatecraft sniffed. "I normally attribute such qualities to you."
"Daisy, you know them?" Marcie asked her.
"Not the professor. I don't go to his class, but just about everybody knows Flim Flam, especially when he stole from the dean. He's a campus legend."
She regarded Flim Flam, again. "Oh, yeah, Suzie's been asking about you, lately."
"Suzie?" he brightened. "Ah, LEG...good times. Good times."
"LEG?" asked Velma.
"Lambda Epsilon Gamma," Daisy said. "My other sisters' sorority house where all the wild girls are."
"Yeah," Flim Flam agreed. "I tell ya, those girls are getting their PhD's in P-A-R-T-Y, man!"
He looked at Red, appraising him. "Hey, big guy! I see you around campus, sometimes. Those specimens over at Mu Gamma Tau would probably like a guy like you in their frat. I could've been a pledge, but what kind of fraternity has a height restriction?"
"Yes, I'm sure that's all very fascinating, but how would any of this help us in our current situation?" The professor sighed.
"You're right, Professor," Marcie concurred, moving to the topic at hand. "Anyway, we've got your message."
Hatecraft looked puzzled. "Message? What message?"
"The book on your desk that was opened to the Roman Coliseum. That was your way of telling us you were taken to the stadium, right?"
"Oh, no," the professor remembered. "Actually, I was just reading it when Flim Flam and I were abducted. Is that why you're here?"
Mentally wiping the egg from her face, Marcie explained. "Well, in a way. We found a clue that led us here, a receipt for booking the stadium by the man who captured us. We only know about the kidnappings a little while ago, and I, kind of, hoped that one clue would, sort of, kill two birds with one stone, so here we are."
"Yes, but why are we here?" he pondered. "Flim Flam and I were about to leave town to study the Celtic/Freemasonry temple that suddenly appeared in Washington D.C., a few days ago. A monument to what these alternate Founding Fathers were like when they were influenced by druid mysticism while creating this new America. I believed that the Enlighteners were threatened that I may discover the secret behind their vast, global power structure, and kidnapped us."
"Believe me, Professor," Marcie sighed. "It's a lot weirder than you think."
Standing in the middle of the football field, a druid prepared.
Changed from his business attire into flowing vestments of white and gold that shimmered under the arena lights, Greenman began planting a seed into the turf with each reverent pace, while Questoids operated the sideline cameras, following his progress.
High above, played out on the grand face of the Jumbotron, people, both in America, and on the other side of the world, were watching him perform this ritual with rapt interest.
These were just a handful of his followers, modern-day druids and worshipers of the druid faith who adhered to the traditional ways of blood and sacrifice. To them, neo-pagans were weak of spirit, at best, and completely heretical, at worst. They were invited weeks ago to be privy to their legendary, holy champion's ascent upon the world stage, once more, to be kicked off with this grand sacrificial event.
Perversely, this had all the air of a pre-game happening, a small affair to help whet the appetite of the visitors and build anticipation of the main event, as Greenman finished pushing the tenth and last Manchineel seed into the ground.
From where he stood, he reached for a flask of pure water that hung on his gilded belt, uncorked it, and, walking backwards, proceeded to water the ground, carefully.
When he was done, he faced his work, raising his hands and offering up an ancient prayer.
The turf began to break on the surface and turn over, erupting dark soil in its wake, as the seeds within germinated with supernatural speed and vigor.
Soft saplings lanced out of the earth, and stiffened, as they started to become thicker, older, and more developed. As their trunks grew broader and stretched to their full fifteen meter heights, their bark took on its signature grayish-tint, and their canopies bloomed explosively, decorated with small, greenish flowers.
Finally, a grand and deadly grove of ten trees, with five on either side, stood before the Hierophant.
The viewers above him added their collective cheers to those of the Questoids in the stands, awed by the divine power gifted to him by the obvious strength of his devotion.
Greenman motioned to a Questoid nearby, and told it, when it arrived, "Bring them out. It's time."
Professor Hatecraft, thoughtfully, leaned forward in his chair, his mind wrestling with the incredible truth and proof of the tale Marcie had told him, backed up by her friends in the places that they were personally a part of.
"Then, it's true. That Greenman fellow you and your mother came to me about is a druid, and somehow, he went back in time to change history and bring about a new global, pagan paradigm. Incredible, but if that's the case, then why haven't we been changed, as well?"
"Heck if we know," Red shrugged. "People been scratchin' their heads about that for days, when they weren't losing them."
"One mystery at a time, guys," Marcie advised. "Anyway, the reason we came to your office, Professor, was to show you a history book that Greenman personally used to help take control of the past."
"Really?" Hatecraft asked, his interest rising with the intrigue. "Personal accounts of a time traveler. The things he witnessed and done, while he changed the very course of history! Where is it?"
"Well, it's...in my car," Marcie admitted, once again, cleaning metaphorical egg from her face. "Sorry, Professor, but, I memorized some of the things he wrote, and I was hoping that we could put our heads together on this."
"Very well, what have you got?"
"Okay, he wrote almost everything down in Gaelic, except for a few words in English, like 'water of the king' and 'threefold death.' Plus, I saw Greenman before we were sent here, and he looks pretty good for someone who's been fighting for centuries. It was pretty rough, back then. You would think he'd have some scars, or something, to show for it."
"You think that there's more to him than that?" The professor considered.
"I don't know, Professor," Marcie said. "But, unless he just used his time machine to hop from century to century, he's been living a very long and very charmed life."
"Interesting. As a devout druid, if everything he's done has been in honor of his gods, then it stands to reason that they may have given him some kind of protection, proof against physical harm and aging, while he works their will, which would explain his mentioning of the threefold death."
Daisy fretted, getting what she could grasp of Celtic mythology. "So...not only is all of this some kind of holy mission to this guy, but he's immortal, too?"
"Possibly, this all just speculation, so far," Professor Hatecraft was quick to say. "Anyway, I'm not sure I understand the meaning behind 'water of the king,' however, I...do know about the threefold death, and as a result, I know how we are connected with it."
"How?" Flim Flam asked.
"Sacrifice, my boy," he answered, grimly. "He plans on doing a threefold death on either us, or the populace, as well, to appease his Celtic gods."
"What's all of this stuff you keep talking about?" Stone asked.
The professor sat back comfortably, crossed his thin legs, steepled his fingers together, and gave the listeners a brooding, thoughtful gaze, heavy with importance.
"Uh-oh, he's going into Lecture Mode. I love this part," Flim Flam whispered to his audience, with a smirk. "Time to let Hatecraft be Hatecraft."
"In many ancient myths around the world, kings, heroes, and gods were bigger than life, and, sometimes, the only way they could die was not from one cause, but by three. Mythically, a threefold death was death involving a tree, drowning or poisoning, and by burning. That is the first form of it. The second form of the threefold death is split into three distinct parts, each one, a sacrifice to three distinct gods.
"Three?" Stone griped. "Sheesh! How many gods did these guys worship?"
"Many, but since Greenman is English, three were known to the Celts of Briton, at the time, Teutates, Esus, and Taranis."
Velma spoke up. "Jinkies! Then, he's planning on sacrificing us to them! A different sacrifice for each god!"
Hatecraft nodded. "Apparently so. For Esus, fatal wounding by trees; for Teutates, drowning; and burning, for Taranis."
Velma glanced over to Marcie, and asked, "Is it too late for that cat to put me back into stasis? Oy!"
"Then, how do we stop him?" asked Jason.
The professor raised a thin finger. "Remember the threefold death. Kings, heroes, and gods succumbed to it."
He regarded Marcie, next. "You theorized that Greenman may have been alive for centuries, while he was on his mission. Assuming that you're correct, if the power of the threefold death is as intricately woven into his religious life, as it is in his personal life, then as a religious hero, at least, in his own mind, he, too, may be vulnerable to this special kind of end."
That threw Marcie and the others that understood what was happening, for a loop. Greenman could be stopped? He could die, if need be? They had something over him that they could use to force him to choose self-preservation over his menace?
"What? You mean-"
"Yes, Miss Fleach," Hatecraft nodded, sagely. "Someone could destroy him by visiting all three deaths upon him, at the same time. It's the only way."
Marcie gave a shaky sigh. She suddenly wished that what Hatecraft and she were bouncing around were just theories, because the difficulty in killing anyone with protection that specific just made stopping him a whole magnitude harder.
If it came to that, she reminded herself. Simply outwitting him would have been more preferable.
"Wow," she muttered, sarcastically. "No pressure, Professor."
Stone stuck a thumb out and pointed to the group sitting on the bench. "Hey, what's with the sad sacks sitting all the way back there?"
"Oh, they were kidnapped, earlier today, Sheriff," answered the professor. "They've been rather quiet since their arrival."
"Let me guess. They were taken from the supermarket," Stone conjectured, overconfidently.
"Actually," Velma said, matter-of-factly. "It looks like they all came from the Crystal Cove Mall. The bags on the floor by their feet all have the mall's logo on it, and the two in uniform? They work for Orange Ya Glad. There's only one franchise of that chain in town, and it's at the mall."
"Oh, yeah. I forgot. Supermarket. Mall. Close enough," Stone shrugged.
Jason whispered to the gang after he noticed the man sitting, in solitude, on the couch. "Hey, guys, check that guy out. Look at his badge. He's one of those scientists from Quest's lab. What's he doing here?"
"Hey!" Stone, suddenly, yelled across the lounge to the man, everyone near him, cringing and mortified. "These kids wanna know who you are!"
The gentleman stood and sighed, as he walked over to address them. "If you must know. I'm the one who turned the Questoids against Dr. Quest, so that maniac, Greenman, could betray him."
"You did?" Jason asked. "Why?"
"To save my family. I was lead programmer for the Questoid project. When I was assigned to the Gatorsburg lab, and my family moved here, they were targeted by Greenman. He said that he would sacrifice them, if I didn't help him take control of the robots, so I wrote an override code that could be uploaded into them, wirelessly. The plan went well enough-"
"We know," the gang, minus Velma, unisoned in deadpan.
"But then, I was kidnapped outside the base, when the staff evacuated," he continued.
"How come?" asked Velma.
The man's head dipped in regret. "Insurance. I wrote the code. I knew too much. He's going to sacrifice me to make sure that those robots stay loyal to him, and to take care of any loose ends."
"It's not over, yet, sir," said Velma. "We'll think of something. Besides, this is my first time seeing these Questoids in action. They look like they run on a pretty complex operating system. I would have loved to have seen the code that could turn those programs around."
"Thanks. If things were different, I might have given you all a better demonstration of what my OS, in them, can do," said the programmer. Then, he thought of what they had to contend with, concerning the wayward machines, lately, and quickly amended what he said, saying apologetically, "But, I guess you've got all the demonstration you can stomach, for now, huh?"
As a point of illustration, he reached into his pants pocket and put a flash drive on the table.
"What's that?" Red asked him.
"The override code," he sighed. "Not that it matters, but it's all in there. They never thought to search me. It's ironic that my legacy is stored in there, and it, ultimately, doomed me."
Just then, the door opened, and all eyes saw the lone Questoid walking into the lounge.
The programmer was about to risk being caught picking up the flash drive to hide it, but when he looked to the table where it rested, the drive was gone. Before he had time to wonder what had happened to it, the guard locked eyes and pointed to him and everyone else, except the gang and the sheriff.
"Have courage, everyone," Hatecraft said, quietly, boldly straightening his posture as he stood. "Do not meet evil with a bent back."
"See ya on the other side, guys," Flim Flam dolefully added, as he and his mentor walked to the doorway.
The rest of the selected ones began sadly marching out of the lounge, nervous and fearful of their collective fate. Then, the door closed behind them.
"We can't let that wacko do to them what they did to Carlton! I won't allow it! Justice won't allow it!" Stone growled.
Velma, thoughtfully, opened her hand to study the flash drive that she hastily hid in it. "Don't worry, Sheriff. I think we may have a way."