Chapter 25
I was merrily listening to music and sipping my wine when my tablet alerted me to a new message on my super secret email account. I thought about not looking at the email and just enjoying my night of success, but then another message came in, something unheard of in the years since I’d created the account.
Lazily logging in, I saw the messages were from Atrox, my neighborhood mafia friend. The first one ordered me to go the chat room immediately. The second said he needed to talk to me about Meredith, or to be more precise Fumantes, since that was the only name he knew her by.
Meredith? What could Atrox want? I went to the chat room, logged in as Aduro, and found Atrox and Latens, Atrox’s associate, waiting for me.
Aduro: “What happened?”
Latens: “Did you let her know we were coming?”
Aduro: “Are you crazy? I’m the one who wants her gone!”
Atrox: “She got away from our guy. Do you know where she is?”
Aduro: “How’d she get away?! I thought you were professionals!”
Atrox: “We are. We underestimated her. Her location?”
Aduro: “Give me a few minutes. I’ll see what I can do.”
Taking a huge gulp of my wine, I opened my tracking program, bringing up her current and past locations. I saw that after she’d left the Secrets of the Ancients building, she’d gone toward her dorm room, but about halfway there, she’d abruptly veered away, going into the nearest building. From there, she’d gone from building to building, most of which she had no classes in.
Once on the other side of campus, she’d gotten onto a trolley which went down into the suburbs. Not someplace she’d been before. After awhile, it looked like she’d gotten off and began wandering around the suburbs, going in and out of stores.
The last reading I’d gotten, she’d been inside of a grocery store, but that had been fifteen minutes ago.
Aduro: “When and where did you lose her?”
Atrox: “Twenty minutes ago. Corner of 1578th and Chips.”
I brought up the map, enlarging it onto the grocery store. The store was about three quarters of a block down 1578th Ave from Chips.
Aduro: “Try Eho Grocer on 1578th. My information puts her there as of fifteen minutes ago.”
Latens: “Stay on the chat while we check it out.”
I looked at his order in disbelief. Like I’d really get off when I didn’t know what was going on. What did he take me for?
But I didn’t say anything. I just sat on my couch sipping my wine, watching the dot which was Meredith. I saw it begin to move, first around the store and then out the back door, but didn’t type anything to Atrox.
It could be his men grabbing her and making a quick getaway, though how they’d get her out of the grocer without her kicking up a huge fuss or anyone noticing something was wrong, especially in a neighborhood like that with all its clean cut lines and low crime rate, was beyond me. Didn’t mafia thugs just stand out like sore thumbs in such neighborhoods? I didn’t know because I’d never lived in one, but maybe the inhabitants just ignored anyone who wasn’t like them. Perhaps if you didn’t acknowledge the stranger in your midst, they simply didn’t exist.
The dot continued out of the back loading zone for the store and began to weave through a series of alleys before stopping.
I went back to the chat room.
Aduro: “Do you have her?” I couldn’t take the suspense anymore. Either they didn’t have her or they needed to have me transmit her newest location.
Atrox: “What are you using to track her?”
Aduro: “Her phone.” I wasn’t using the signal from her tablet because that was still at her attic, obviously not in her possession when she began running.
Atrox and Latens didn’t say anything for a few minutes, leaving me watching a blinking curser, needing information.
Aduro: “What has gone wrong?” Something must have gone wrong or they’d be sending me thanks and celebrating a successful hunt.
Latens: “Found phone, but no target.”
Aduro: “Damn. She must have dumped the phone and gone underground.”
Atrox: “Is there anywhere she could have gone?”
I began to type in no when I thought of her vault of treasures. If I were going underground, I’d go to my stash of goods. They’d be easy to sell, bringing in much needed money I’d need to hide out while my enemies hunted fruitlessly for me.
I jumped to my feet and was out the door before I even realized what I was doing. I was on the trolley the next time I answered Latens and Atrox.
Aduro: “Have an idea. Going to check it out now. Have anyone near campus?”
Latens: “Where are you going? Are you hiding her from us? If you know where she is and don’t tell us, I’ll –”
Aduro: “I don’t know where she is. I said I have an idea. Can’t you read? Now answer my question.”
Atrox: “We have people who could get to that location within ten minutes. Where would you like them to meet you?”
Did I even want them to meet me? If she was there, then I’d need them to grab her and haul her away. However, if she wasn’t I’d be letting them know there was something interesting inside the building.
Decisions…decisions…
Aduro: “Send them to the Super Sciences building. If I see her, I’ll let you know where you can direct them. If not, I’ll let you know.”
Atrox: “Understood. ETA eight minutes.”
The trolley had barely come to a stop when I jumped off and began to run towards the Secrets of the Ancients building. I didn’t care if people looked at me strangely, or noticed which direction I was going. All I cared about was getting to Meredith’s vault as fast as humanly possible and making sure she hadn’t taken anything.
But what could she take? I asked myself as I dodged around walkers and hoverboarders on the main path. Most of the pieces were heavy and burdensome. It would take someone with the ability to lift very heavy objects easily or a dolly to move them anywhere.
Except for the gold and silver, the tiny voice reminded me. While it was heavy, it could be moved without anybody noticing.
No, not the gold and silver. She couldn’t take my gold and silver. It was mine now. I’d found it fair and square and no two bit bitch was going to take it from me.
I passed the last fork in the road, every step taking me that much closer to the Secrets of the Ancients building.
Up ahead I was barely able to make out some dim lights which were shining through the trees. I was surprised the lights weren’t brighter. If there was one thing the school was particular about, it had to be the placement of lighting along every path, outside every building, and throughout every inch of parkland. Very few areas were dark or dim. The only exceptions were the dorms and only then because so many students had complained they couldn’t sleep with a three thousand watt spotlight shining down on them through every window.
(The campus had tried putting blackout shades on the dorm windows, but this had just presented another host of problems. While the shades kept out the light from the spotlight, they also kept out the natural sunshine, which was essential to a third of the student body. Without the sunshine, they’d have all been late for class and their jobs, if not missing them entirely.
Campus officials had pointed out that the reason alarm clocks had been invented was so people wouldn’t be late for their classes and appointments. The riots and frequent shade plastering on these officials’ home windows, however, was enough to get the spotlights taken down and all mention of using shades disappeared.)
In fact, I suddenly realized that once I’d turned on the final fork, the path lights were a lot farther apart from each other than they should be. And they were dimmer. They felt as if they only gave off a third of the light any other light on a path on campus gave off. This was just enough light to guide, but not enough to penetrate the dark.
However, I was only fully able to appreciate how incredib
ly dark it was when I found myself nearly stumbling off the path in the sudden darkness. Something about the darkness didn’t feel authentic.
I slowed down, not liking the feeling I was walking into a trap. After a few steps, I forced myself to pick up speed.
I had to ignore my misgivings. My random fears and paranoia were just slowing me down and preventing me from focusing on what was really important: making sure she didn’t get any of my loot.
My determination and drive to overcome my completely irrational fears went out the window when I received my first sight of the building’s façade.
It looked haunted.
Haunted and possessed.
The few lights surrounding the building were rendered dim and hazy by a sudden mist. Where this mist had come from, I don’t know, but it seemed to be only around the Secrets of the Ancients building and the immediate path leading toward it.
Each window in the building was similarly hazy, the light shining out barely reaching the outside of the window let alone the grass.
Even as I stood there, I saw shadows pass in front of the windows. Indescribable blobs which appeared ghostlike in the strange fog. Intellectually, I knew they couldn’t be ghosts. However that didn’t mean I was completely confident they were human either.
The figures I saw, or to be more accurate thought I saw, were so lacking in definition that I found it hard to predict what manner of being I might come in contact with when I finally entered the haunted building before me.
The building, which had been weirdly shaped and eye catching in the light almost seemed to radiate darkness tonight. An idea in direct opposition to all that is possible in the universe.
Instead of spotlights, which might have illuminated the building at night and made it stand out from the pitch black woods which surrounded it, there appeared to be spotdarks. Spots of almost impossibly deep blackness, where one could wonder if the spot was absorbing all the available light like a black hole in order to sustain itself.
One of these spotdarks was directly over the front door.
Or where I remembered the front door being. It was impossible to tell if it was still there because of the complete blackness in this area.
Noises from the surrounding trees sounded louder than normal.
Crack.
Pop.
Screech.
Howl.
Howl? There weren’t wolves out here…were there?
Trees rustled and I felt a sudden chill run down the back of my neck, across my shoulders, and down my arms. Something inside me told me the chill wasn’t from the wind which had whipped up suddenly before disappearing as fast as it had arrived.
I did not want to keep going.
I really did not want to keep going.
I didn’t know what I’d find if I kept going.
Who’d I’d find if I kept going.
But I also didn’t want to stay here. Who knew what might come out to greet me if I continued to stare at this building like a simpleton? I could be mauled by a wild beast. Or worse yet, I’d chicken out and run away with my tail between my legs.
I was surprised at how hard it was to take my next step. I had to make a conscious effort to even pick up my foot to take the step.
My foot felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds.
With a total commitment of all my mental energies, I raised it and put it down less than a pace before me.
Just doing this simple act, picking up my foot and setting it down before me, felt as if I were pulling my foot out of quick sand, but that little movement paved the way for the other foot. If I could move one foot, I could move the other.
And if I could move that one, then the next one would be easier yet.
I could do it.
I would do it.
I would march into that building. I would catch Meredith red handed. And she would be captured, shipped off, and out of my hair forever.
No haunted house was going to scare me away.
Nothing could beat me but me and even then only when I allowed myself the luxury of resigning from the field of battle on my terms.
Never would I walk away on someone else’s terms.
Summoning all of the courage within me, I stormed to the front door, fumbled with the handle a second before yanking it open, and stomped inside, where I saw nothing had changed. It was just as bright and sterile as before. I gratefully embraced the normalcy after the abnormality of the outside world.
It took me a few minutes to recover my breath, but once I had, I started the long and winding trek to the wall which would reveal the staircase.
Many times I felt as if I had lost my way. More than once I doubled back for walls and halls seemed to arbitrarily rearrange themselves with no rhyme or reason as to the moves. Halls I hadn’t noticed would appear out of nowhere and halls I’d seen just hours before were gone.
My winding journey to the wall which would get me up the stairs felt longer and more epic than it had been when I was following Meredith, but eventually I reached it.
When I reached the stair wall there was not a soul to be seen, so I punched in the code as fast as I could and ran up the stairs. Up, up, up the winding staircase I ran. I moved so fast I was panting by the time I reached the landing outside my vault.
I bent over and put my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I breathed in life giving oxygen through my nose and breathed out through my mouth, feeding my starved lungs.
Once I could breathe without wheezing, I opened the vault.
“That harpy!” I screamed as I saw what the beast had done.
I stormed around the vault, trying to come to terms with what I was seeing. How had she done it? How in all that is holy had she moved a three hundred pound gold and marble statue?
(A three hundred pound statue with three gold and silver jewel encrusted sand cats which sat perched at the feet of a sitting regal man and woman. Zilpha and Silas from the PraeAnarchist art movement.
The few other known sculptures which contained their likenesses were from the Nouveau Laxo movement. During the Nouveau Laxo movement, they’re likenesses changed dramatically to the point they were shrouded in sheets of pure white linen and began resembling the Ancient gods and goddesses more so than the individualism they’d radiated in previous PraeAnarchist pieces.
According to Anarchist legends, Zilpha and Silas were the first woman and man in the world, created from the desert sands of the Cindra and raised by a sand cat mother until adulthood. From the desert, they emerged into a lawless land where their children and grandchildren had become like the animals Zilpha and Silas had worked to be better than.
The entire first book of the Anarchist’s holy book, the Libertallious Honestrum, was about Zilpha and Silas’ travels, trials, and tribulations as they combated lawlessness and returned order to the world they’d helped create.
The sand cats, who were their constant companions while they battled the evil in the world, were said to bring good luck and prosperity to those who gazed upon them. Because of this, they were one of the central motifs of the Anarchist’s, and were found on every building, in every painting, and were written about extensively in the texts.
But what made this statue unique and infinitely sought after, was the presence of Zilpha and Silas. While they were very important to the Anarchists, their Adam and Eve, their likenesses were rarely depicted. Or at least not many statues and paintings showing them had survived the wars and purges to present day.)
I wanted to kill her. How dare she steal my Zilpha and Silas statue? It had to have been one of the most valuable items in here.
That stopped me. What if it were the most valuable?
I pulled up the spreadsheet of vault items on my phone and saw that the statue was not only the heaviest item, but also the most expensive.
My eyes grew when I saw how much it could sell for. With that much money, she could get a ticket from here to the very edge of the universe and stil
l have money left to live on for a few years.
“How’d she get it down a winding staircase without any help?” It was impossible. Nobody, short of two or three very strong men, could have gotten it out of this vault. “But…but if she didn’t have help…how’d she get it up here in the first place?” I said slowly. My eyes strayed to the other very heavy statues. “How’d she get any of this stuff up here without help?”
I was missing something. I had to be missing something very important, or else…there was no or else. I was missing some key piece to this puzzle.
I slowly rotated, searching the four walls for some exit or elevator or…something I’d missed before. But I didn’t see anything. All I saw was wall.
You only saw wall on the outside of this vault, until the keypad came out, the little voice in my head said. The voice was right. There could be a secret panel I had to push or a lever I needed to pull to activate a hidden elevator or open a secret passage.
I ran my hands over every inch of the walls. I pushed against the wall every inch or two, hoping to find the hidden catch which would release the wall. I was sure the catch or keypad or some other such mechanism which kept the walls in place was the key to the mystery of the missing statue.
Nothing came to the surface.
Nothing appeared.
Nothing even moved.
I leaned my head against a wall, trying not to wallow in my misery. If there was a secret something, I couldn’t find it and no amount of searching was going to reveal it, so what now?
“I guess I should tell Atrox about this newest development,” I grumbled, imagining how Latens would react. He’d blow his top, if I was any judge of character.
I grimly smiled. At least I wouldn’t be the only one upset at the turn of events. I’d gotten the feeling they wanted her gone as much as I did.
I grabbed my phone and I logged back into the chat room under my assumed name. As I’d expected, Atrox and Latens were there, waiting for my update.
Aduro: “Checked and she’s not where I thought she’d be. But I do know that she’s gotten away with an Anarchist statue worth thirty million dollars.”
Atrox: “What does this statue look like?”
Instead of writing down all the details, I decided to email him a picture of it from a quick image search. It wasn’t really hard to find pictures online because after it’d been stolen every news agency in the sector had plastered its likeness across their front pages for all to see.
Once I’d found a few good ones, along with the exact specs, I emailed them to Atrox.
Aduro: “All the information I have on it I just emailed you.”
Latens: “How sure are you that she has this object?”
Adruo: “One hundred percent. If she sells it, we’ll never catch up with her.”
Atrox: “This is a specialty item. Only a few people would be willing to buy it, especially hot. If she contacts them, they’ll let me know.”
Aduro: “Good. Let them know right away. I have a feeling she’ll try to get rid of it quickly.”
Latens: “Don’t you have any other idea as to where she is?”
Aduro: “No. She’s on the run. She won’t go anywhere she’s been before.”
Atrox: “Let me know if you find out anything.”
Aduro: “I will if you will.”
Atrox: “Agreed.”
I got off the chat and decided to email everyone I knew in the business that I was on the lookout for Meredith. I gave them a description, a photo, and an idea of what she might be trying to sell. I promised a reward to anyone who could give me information as to her whereabouts that ended in her apprehension. I knew the reward would entice the greedier of my associates to actively look for her. The more eyes, the better. That was my motto.
But what was I going to do?