Cragbridge Hall, Volume 2: The Avatar Battle (24 page)

“Yes, of course. But the way you took off when you found out that Mackleprank wasn’t answering his messages, you seemed desperate.” This was tough to say. Derick didn’t want to seem like he was accusing Rafa of anything, but he did want to understand what had happened. “You reminded me of me when my grandpa was kidnapped and my parents were missing.”

Rafa opened his mouth then closed it again.

Derick waited a few more moments, making sure Rafa wasn’t going to say anything. “I was desperate last semester and I was up against a wall. And you bailed me out.” He rubbed his forehead. “There was no way we could have saved my grandpa and my parents without you. And I know you’re the guy with all the talent, the one who doesn’t fail.” Derick paused. “I’m not. But I’d love to return the favor. You probably don’t need any help, but if there is anything I can do, let me know.”

Rafa looked at Derick for a moment.

Derick nearly patted Rafa on the shoulder, but thought better of it. He got up to leave. He made it to the door before Rafa spoke. “Wait. I owe you more of an answer after the way I have acted. Last semester you shared your secret with me and I know I can trust you.” He paused. “You know your grandfather worked on the avatar technology.”

Derick nodded.

“He’s responsible for the connection between our brains, the sensors, and the robot. I think it may relate to the same technology that’s in the Chair. At least there’s a mind link there too. But it wasn’t your grandpa who developed the actual robotics.”

“Mackleprank?” Derick guessed.

“No,” Rafa said. “I’ll let you look it up.”

Derick turned on his rings. There were several theories about who had invented the avatars, but one of them stood out—a woman from Brazil. “It was someone you knew? Someone from home?”

Rafa took his hair out of his ponytail and let it fall over his eyes. He paced quietly around the room. “My mother said that I used to watch some of her experiments. She even bought me some of those robotic remote controlled animal toys when I was growing up. As she got better at the robots, she let me play with the more durable prototypes. My dad was really never in the picture.” He flopped his hair to one side of his head. Derick noticed moisture in the corners of his eyes. “I’m talented at the avatars because I’ve been practicing on them all my life.”

“Your mom invented the avatar? Oh, I’m jealous,” Derick confessed.

Rafa smiled. “Says the grandson of Oscar Cragbridge.”

“Yeah, but he never let us try any of his inventions until we got here.”

“Given what my mom learned, it probably is better to keep his inventions under wraps so he can control who sees them and when.” Rafa shifted on his bed. “Some people, when they found out what my mom could do, wanted the technology. There was a long list of reasons why, but some of them seemed shady. When she did her research on some potential buyers, she realized her inventions were capable of doing some of the worst things imaginable, and that’s what they wanted them for. They could use avatars as spies or even assassins. No one would expect a dog or a monkey to be deadly. And they weren’t willing to back away when my mom told them no.”

Derick looked away a moment, trying to process all that he was hearing.

“Thankfully, my mom came to your grandpa for help.” Rafa looked at Derick, his eyes glazed with tears. “He is not only a genius, but a man with a big heart—
um grande coraçã
o.
He brought me here and has helped my mom stay hidden.”

Derick’s jaw dropped as he realized the implications of what Rafa just said. “Your mom is in hiding?”

“
Sim.
Yes. I communicate with her every day, but it’s . . . very unusual how it works. As you can imagine, we have to take every precaution to keep her location safe. She has to move every few months just to be sure.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Have you ever thought what a drug lord or dictator could do with a robotic animal? No one would suspect anything. It would be the ultimate weapon.”

“Makes sense.”

“Because of your grandfather’s help, I was willing to give you a chance when you stole the avatar earlier this year.”

“Thanks for that. We owe you one.”

“No. I had a small chance to pay you back.”

Derick wondered what all this had to do with Dr. Mackleprank. “Does Mackleprank know all this?”

“Yes,” Rafa said. “He and your grandpa are the only ones. Well, and now you. He’s the closest thing I have to a parent here.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Derick admitted. He knew what it felt like to have his parents missing, but not to be away from them for years.

Rafa shrugged. “I don’t know what I’d want you to say. But I sent your grandfather a message. I want Dr. Mackleprank under protection all the time.”

Derick wanted to say that everything would be fine, but he knew Dr. Mackleprank would be invited to defend his own innocence on the Chair that afternoon after school.

• • •

Abby stared at Mrs. Trinhouse. She taught with the same zeal as always, bubbly and bouncing. Perhaps she didn’t feel affected by all of this. Or maybe she was somehow involved and thrilled that it had gone the way she planned. Or maybe she could just hide it really well.

“Any questions so far?” Mrs. Trinhouse asked.

Abby had questions. She wanted to ask, “Why were you in the Watchman in the middle of the night?” and “Were you the one who attacked Coach Adonavich?” She couldn’t, of course. She tried to think of what Sherlock would do.
It’s obvious,
she thought to herself, hoping to think like Sherlock or Joseph Bell.
It’s obvious that . . . I don’t know much of anything.

In a few hours when school ended, Abby would get to see what Mrs. Trinhouse thought while sitting in the Chair. They hadn’t been able to take everyone up to the English classroom just after their meeting because school was starting—the teachers couldn’t draw attention to themselves by missing their classes, not to mention it would be tough to use a Chair and ask sensitive questions with a classful of English students in the room.

“We will go ahead and give you time to work on the projects you started last class,” Mrs. Trinhouse instructed. “I’m excited to see your work. I’m ready to be astounded by it.”

Astounded? Perhaps she would have been if it hadn’t all been destroyed to prove Grandpa’s point. Abby knew she was behind on her creation. She had to finish it to get a good grade. And she needed that good grade to stay at Cragbridge.

She took a deep breath. If she wasn’t careful, fear would sweep over her. Fear of getting kicked out. Fear of someone sneaking in the night and shooting her with a tranquilizer. She exhaled. She had to try to move ahead.

Abby stepped into a booth and put on her visor. She logged onto the class page and stared at the all of the possible building supplies. Should she remake her castle or start something new? She could make anything. Maybe a roller coaster, or a beauty spa, or . . . She couldn’t finish her thought. She pictured Ms. Entrese and Coach Adonavich. She took another deep breath. Nothing she could build would help that.

Or would it?

What if she could get a good look at the room where the intruder had entered and attacked Coach Adonavich? Maybe there were blueprints. She changed her rings to search for the plans of the teachers’ apartments at Cragbridge Hall. She thought she remembered that building blueprints were on public record. Yet she found nothing but an article stating that Cragbridge Hall, because of the avatars, the Bridge, the Chair and other Cragbridge inventions, not to mention its surveillance needs, did not have blueprints available to the public. And Abby also knew that her grandpa had a time machine in the basement. All of the secret passageways leading to it probably shouldn’t be there for everyone to see.

She had seen the room once in the video when they found Coach Adonavich. That would have to be good enough. Abby closed her eyes and tried to remember. The room she saw was a rectangle. She estimated the size, not bothering to make it part of a greater whole, just a free-standing room. She built the sides with wood framing and paneled over it. She added a doorway to the bathroom, as well as another to the kitchen and living room.

She tried to remember more. There was a floating bed against the wall. Abby selected repulsor magnets, the tech that caused the real beds to float. She selected other materials, putting the room together the best she could. Trophies stood in a case built into one wall, a mirror covered another wall, and a window looked out toward the Watchman. She thought she could remember a duct on the floor for heating.

Abby stood in the middle of the virtual room she had made, inspecting it closely.

There was a window. But there was no footage of anyone entering or leaving. There was the bathroom. It might have a window, possibly a fan leading outside, but those would be too small to enter through, especially for the man they had seen.

She looked at the bed. Wait. She had something. She could remember the dart in Coach Adonavich’s neck. It hadn’t gone in straight—it leaned. And it didn’t lean toward the door. That meant no one would have shot her from that angle. It came from the side of the window. Yes, the window would work. Perhaps someone had poked their head in and blew the dart. That was possible, but not without being caught on camera. Could they have been on the roof somewhere and shot through an open window? Yes, but the window wasn’t open. They might have shot through the closed window, but there was no hole. And after the coach was comatose, they still would have had to come in to get the key.

Abby’s mind filled with questions.

Why would he walk over to the window before shooting? Wouldn’t that have been foolish? Someone might have seen his silhouette. No. The lights were out.

“Do you mind if I see what you are working on?” Mrs. Trinhouse asked.

“Uh,” Abby stammered. “It isn’t done yet.” She lifted her visor.

“Oh. I don’t mind if you don’t. I love to see a work in progress.”

“I’d rather show it to you later,” Abby said, hoping Mrs. Trinhouse would go for it.

“I don’t want you to feel pressure.” Mrs. Trinhouse put her hand on Abby’s shoulder. “And I know there is a lot going on, but you
are
a little behind in your work. We need to make sure you keep up on it, because we definitely need you around.”

Nice words. Abby wondered if Mrs. Trinhouse meant them. She was able to act excited when she gave her lecture. She could probably act sincere and concerned right now.

“But Abby,” she said, lowering her voice. “I wonder if you should back out of that group we both belong to. Your brother too.” She was obviously referring to the Council of the Keys. “I’m not sure anyone your age should have to deal with the pressure or the danger. Let us adults handle it.”

She sounded like Muns.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to either of you.”

Abby looked back at her teacher. She gave a half-smile.

“Think about it,” Mrs. Trinhouse said. “And let me know if I can help with your project.”

Abby put her visor on. She would look again. She would not back down. She would figure this out.

• • •

Abby tried to walk to the cafeteria, but she couldn’t. She walked to the med center instead. She had tried all class period, but she still had no idea how the intruder got in. Soon she was sitting in a hard chair between Coach Adonavich and Ms. Entrese. She held her head in her hands. Her shoulders lurched as she cried.

“I’m so sorry. You two were both brave enough to stand up to Muns, and I can’t figure out how he did this. It doesn’t make any sense.” She looked over at Coach Adonavich. She remembered running to the mountain top in her gym class and playing one of the most competitive games of basketball ever. The coach had drive and determination. Grandpa trusted her, and she had been one of the two others who had turned the keys to help Abby save her parents.

The fear came back like a storm, clouding over Abby. If Muns could get someone as smart and quick and athletic as Adonavich, then what chance did
she
have? Abby had made it clear that she was opposed to Muns. Was she going to end up like Adonavich? One night she would get a dart in her neck and the next thing she knew, she’d wake up to a new reality. Muns would have won. Everything would be different. Unless he changed the past too much, then maybe he would alter history enough that she would never exist at all. She might never wake up, having never existed.

She cried some more. She hated the feeling. She hated how it filled her, crowded all her other thoughts out. She didn’t want to be afraid, but she couldn’t help it.

She looked at Ms. Entrese again. Memories flooded back through her. Ms. Entrese had put her in the Chair at the beginning of the year. Though their relationship had started out rocky, she had taught Abby well. Abby thought of the Sherlock Holmes story she had planned to show Ms. Entrese in the Chair as her first assignment of the new semester—“The Speckled Band.”

It was a murder mystery. A woman had died in the night; her last words were “the speckled band.” Her sister suspected their stepfather, who lived in the next room over, but there was no evidence. Thankfully Ms. Entrese hadn’t been murdered.

Abby turned on her rings and opened the story—perhaps trying to distract herself, or perhaps just to wish she were more like Holmes. She began to read. Holmes sat in one of the wicker chairs and gazed at the room the woman had been murdered in. He took in each detail. He paused on a tight new bell rope, used to call a servant, that hung down from the ceiling, its tassels resting on the bed’s pillow. After examining it closer and giving it a pull, he discovered it was no bell rope at all. It did not call anyone. “Very strange,” he muttered.

Abby read on and Sherlock pointed out what else he thought was strange—the ventilator shaft that went to the room next door and not to the outside for fresh air.

All three characters moved to the room the ventilator shaft connected to—the stepfather’s room next door. Abby imagined an especially large bed for what the book detailed was a large man who could bend an iron rod into a curl. Holmes walked around the room, taking in the books on the bookshelves, a wooden chair, a round table, and an iron safe. Sherlock carefully looked at it all.