Once we had clambered up onto the roof of the elevator, getting to the top of the shaft and to the executive floor above was pretty simple. The hardest part, really, was leaving the sound of Rudolph, Sean, and Vulcan fighting those zombies without staying behind to help. Oh God, how badly I wanted to stay. Leaving the two of them there sucked. But staying would have accomplished nothing. Yes, we could have held them off for longer, but we’d just be caught in a loop of killing more and more zombies over and over again with no actual solution. Wherever he was, Manakel could just keep bringing them back. Eventually they’d be joined by the bigger threats and… yeah, staying was a bad idea all around.
So no, as hard as it was, we had to let the two boys cover us while we pushed on to get up to that jammer. It was the only thing we could do, the only chance we had.
To that end, I took hold of Shiori, wrapping an arm around the other girl before using my staff to boost the two of us all the way to the top. We landed easily in the little space between the elevator doorway and the open shaft, balancing there while the others waited below.
Shiori immediately turned her attention to using her metal-control power to get the doors open, while I got ready to cover her, just in case there was an immediate attack. Because, well, I wouldn’t put it past these guys to ambush us right there.
But as the doors opened to reveal a nicely carpeted hallway, no threats immediately presented themselves. There was a beautiful painting of a boat on stormy waters taking up a good portion of the wall directly ahead, while the corridor itself ran both ways past the elevator. The only other bit of furnishing in the hall was a small table partway down on the right with a vase on it. Otherwise, it was just pale blue carpeted floor and wood paneled walls. The place looked more like a mid-range hotel hallway than something that would be in a hospital.
Cautiously, the two of us moved into that hall, making room just before Columbus appeared with his hand on Doug. Right behind him was Avalon, who borrowed Columbus’s teleportation to appear with Choo (who still had Marian on his back).
Columbus immediately disappeared then after dropping off Doug, before showing up once more with Scout. And then we were all there.
While Tabbris made Marian gently pat Choo’s head (who was vaguely freaked out by the teleportation) and made cooing noises to calm him down, the rest of us looked around. The hall was long, extending pretty far in either direction, with a handful of blank, unlabeled doors.
Luckily, Rudolph had already told us where we needed to go, just in case we got up here without him, or if anything happened. According to the boy, most of these doors basically led nowhere. Or, at most, to regular offices. We needed to go left, hit the end of the hall, then go right to reach the director’s penthouse office. The director himself usually teleported directly into it, but this was the… well, ‘manual’ way of getting there. Which also meant that there would probably be even more problems for us to work our way through before we actually made it to the office itself. And there… well, there we’d no doubt find Manakel himself. And then things would get even more ‘fun.’
Get to the office, use the spell-hiccup grenades on the jammer, and then let Gaia and the others come in and clean everything up. That was all we had to do, and there was no reason for Manakel to suspect we even knew how to use a spell that would disrupt the jammer at all.
Um, are you trying to convince me that it’s gonna be easy, or yourself? Tabbris hesitantly piped up then.
Wincing, I mentally shrugged. It’s definitely not gonna be easy. I’m going for convincing both of us that it’s possible. How am I doing?
There was a brief pause then, before she replied, I think it’s possible. We just have to help Mama and the others get inside, right?
Right, I confirmed. We help your mom, Gaia, and the others and then let them handle the worst of it. We can do that.
I hope.
By that time, Columbus had turned to the rest of us after carefully examining the corridor with his goggles, shaking his head. “No spells,” the boy murmured quietly before immediately adding in a slightly darker tone, “which makes this feel even worse.”
Avalon nodded. “It’d be better if there were spells to stop us. This way, it’s like he actually wants us to get there.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” I replied before looking to Shiori. “Anything?”
Her head shook. “No one’s watching us. Or me,” she amended then. “No one’s watching me.”
Holding the crossbow that his pen had created in one hand, Doug quickly snapped, “Rudolph and Sean can’t hold out forever down there. We need to get there asap. Yesterday, preferably.”
He was right. There was no time to waste. So, without another word, we sprinted together down that hall. Columbus went first, keeping an eye out for any magic that could have stopped us (or worse), while the rest of us were right behind him, spreading out to take up most of the width of the hall. Tabbris kept Marian on Choo’s back as the Jekern ran right between Avalon and Shiori, making happy noises about being allowed to run with the rest of us.
The place was huge. I didn’t know what else was up here besides the director’s office, but apparently they did a lot. We ran for what had to be five minutes, following Rudolph’s instructions. Left, hit the end of the hall, then go right. The trouble was that ‘right’ went on for what felt like forever. I was pretty sure there was some spatial trickery going on.
Finally, we came to the end of that ridiculously long hall. Right there in front of us were a pair of enormous, ornate double doors. They were made of what looked like rare jungle wood (not that I was an expert or anything), and had intricate designs carved all along the sides and along the top that seemed to depict some epic battle between a man with a sword and a bunch of monsters, if you followed it from bottom left, up to the top, then along and down to the bottom right. The knobs were each gold, and shaped like a snake’s head. In the middle of each door was a half-circle that formed a full circle when they were closed, and in the middle of that circle were the words, ‘Medici Graviores Morbos Asperis Remediis Curant.’
Doctors cure the more serious diseases with harsh remedies, Tabbris translated quietly. Sounds like a quote or something.
Before I could respond to that, Avalon moved to those doors. She looked to Columbus while raising her foot to kick them in, and he nodded to show that there was apparently no magical spell connected to them or anything. So the girl reared back, lashing out with her foot. The blow knocked both doors inward, making them spring open while the rest of us moved quickly to cover her. Because again, perfect time for a trap.
But there wasn’t one. At least, not one that triggered right then. There were no zombies waiting, no cackling Seosten monster, no one.
What we saw instead was… an office. A pretty grand one, at that. There were floor to ceiling ‘windows’ all along the far wall that showed various scenes similar to the ones in Gaia’s office. The ceiling was about twenty feet up, while the whole room itself was about thirty feet across from this wall to the one where the windows were, and a good forty feet long. The door we were at was close to the rear right corner. The carpeting was plush and clearly expensive, and there was a fully stocked bar about midway down on our side of the room, while opposite that was a wooden dining table loaded with fruits and cheeses, along with a glass of what looked like wine that was half-finished. At the far end sat an enormous desk that looked large enough for an ogre to hold court at, with a chair that was more like a throne. Seriously, who was this office supposed to be for, exactly, a literal god of healing?
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Oh, and of course there were also the forcefields holding all the hostages. Couldn’t forget about that.
Yeah. Forcefields and hostages. They were tube-shaped, spaced about five or six feet apart along the far window-wall, and each held a different individual. Professor Dare was there, as was Professor Kohaku, Deveron, Nevada, and… Koren. Koren was there too, somehow. All of them were frozen in place, in what looked like some kind of suspended animation. Each of them also looked surprised, though Professor Dare also looked angry.
Eyes widening at that sight, I moved that way, blurting an incredulous and confused, “What the hell?”
Koren. Why was Koren here? What happened to her? Was this because she sent that message? Had Manakel grabbed her then? And Deveron… had he been with her? What about that pixie? What happened to the pixie? What… how… what?
The others followed me as I rushed that way, until Columbus put a hand up to stop us. “Wait,” he started, “spells. There’s spells attached to them. They…” Frowning as he trailed off, the boy slowly looked along the floor, before eventually focusing on the opposite wall, back behind the bar. “There.”
Doug was closest, and he looked around a little there before reaching up. His hands found some kind of latch, before yanking open panel that revealed a safe with a keypad.
“A safe, seriously?” Shiori was shaking her head. “Let me guess, that’s–”
“–Where the jammer is,” Columbus finished for her, nodding. “Yeah.”
“Okay, first of all, why is Koren Fellows here?” Doug was pointing past us to the girl in question. “I mean, the others I get, but Fellows? Actually, come to think of it, why was she texting you about this Manakel guy to begin with? She’s obviously in on it and all, but… how much? And why is she here now instead of back at the school? What the hell is up with you guys?”
“Excellent questions,” I replied. “Unfortunately, we seriously don’t really have time to go over them. Not even the parts that I’m actually physically capable of explaining right now.”
“You know what else we don’t have time for?” Columbus snapped then with a vague gesture across the room. “Figuring out a combination for that safe. And believe me, all the spells hooked up to it, you don’t want to try to break it open.”
Nodding, I turned in a circle while a frown found its way to my face. “Yeah. Plus, you know, why isn’t Manakel in here? Seriously, a safe is all that’s protecting his jammer and his hostages? I don’t buy it. So where the hell is he? Shiori?”
The girl shook her head. “Nuh uh. No one’s watching us that we don’t know about.”
“This is screwed up,” I announced. “Something about this whole thing is just… really screwed up.”
Doug shrugged a little. “Well, the safe’s easy enough. Haven’t used my question yet today, so…” Pausing briefly to consult his power, he then quickly typed in a series of nine numbers. The safe beeped, and he pulled the door open, revealing the compartment inside. And within that compartment sat a glowing blue crystal, about a foot high and shaped roughly like a stereotypical diamond, sitting on a wooden pedestal.
“That’s it, right?” the boy asked, looking back to the rest of us while tugging his jammer-interrupter from his pocket. “We just use this thing right now and the cavalry can come in?” God, he sounded so hopeful that it would be that easy.
It was easy. Entirely too fucking easy. Which Columbus immediately confirmed by quickly shaking his head. “Don’t,” he warned with a raised hand, “it’s a trap. Yeah, that’s the jammer. Or I’m pretty sure it is, anyway. But… but the spells are connected from those forcefields into that crystal.” He gestured to where Dare, Koren, and the others were held in their magical stasis prisons. “I dunno what they do, but I can see six spells leading directly into that jammer, and five of them leading back out again. I can’t see where they go. It’s… blocked or something, I don’t know. It’s like the lines disappear, like they’re protected. But I’m pretty sure they connect to the stasis fields over there. I just… couldn’t tell you what they’re for.”
“And we don’t have time to figure out what they all do,” I put in with a groan while putting my hand up to my forehead. “Let alone disarm them safely. No wonder Manakel left this here. He could probably sit around doing a leisurely crossword or something while we try to figure this out. And this whole time, Sean and Rudolph are down there dealing with zombies. Not to mention everything else that–Damn it, we don’t have time for any of this!”
“In that case,” a voice announced from the same doorway that we had just come through, “allow me to help you, Miss Chambers.”
The man who stood there, just in the doorway, wasn’t tall, standing a couple inches less than six feet. He looked like he was in his fifties, though he was clearly a hell of a lot older than that. He was also mostly bald, and maybe a tiny bit overweight, though he had clearly been quite handsome in his youth.
Manakel. It was Manakel, in the flesh. He had arrived. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing in the doorway, but there he was, looking utterly casual about the whole situation. Which, well, duh. Of course he felt secure. He could kill all of us together without breaking a sweat. Or really putting much effort into it at all.
As soon as the man arrived, Choo made a noise of (completely understandable) fear and moved behind Shiori with Marian still perched on his back. Once ‘safely’ hidden, he still stuck his head out and made a cautiously threatening sound at the man, electricity dancing across and between his little tusks.
If Manakel cared about the Jekern that was making noises at him, he didn’t show it. Instead, the Seosten who had tormented Avalon all year focused directly on her. “You see,” he explained, “those friends of yours are connected to what you so… ridiculously simplified as a… jammer, was it? They’re powering it, essentially. You can stop it for a second or two by interrupting those forcefields with your… toys.” His hand waved absently toward the spell-hiccup grenade Douglas was holding. “But, if you do that, the forcefield you’re interrupting will collapse. And in this case, collapse means crush itself into a tiny speck. It will go from being that size, to about… oh, this size.” His hand came up, showing his index finger and thumb formed into a tiny circle. “Which will, of course, crush everything inside of it.
“Now, I may have proven incapable of accurately predicting every move you people would make. But I’m pretty sure that’s something you don’t want to happen to… well, any of the people in those forcefields.”
He smiled at us then, letting that silence hold for just a couple of seconds before adding a tiny shrug. “On the plus side though, after that, the jammer comes back up and everyone else is okay. So, you know, maybe I’m wrong and there’s someone here you see as an acceptable loss. Or two… three… exactly how many seconds do you think your friends out there need to break in here? How many of your friends here are you willing to kill just to save yourselves? I’m really quite curious on that part.”
Avalon was the one who found her voice first. “You’re seriously just going to stand there and see if we decide to kill one of the people here?”
Manakel’s response was a shrug. “I told you, I’m very curious. And we have time. Well, not much.” Holding up his wrist, the man tapped an expensive-looking watch with two fingers from his other hand. “By my clock, that protective spell is just about out of time. Which means it should be safe to kill you within… oh… sixty seconds?
“Oh, yes, I like this game very much. Let’s call it that, shall we? Sixty seconds. In sixty seconds, I’m going to kill you, Miss Sinclaire, or whatever moniker you’re using now. I’m going to kill you in front of the others. And then we will move onto them. Or, well, you could try killing off Miss Dare and however many others you need to before the cavalry arrives. Will two be enough? Or do you think they’ll need all six to make it in?”
“Six?” I put in despite myself. “There’s only five.”
Pursing his lips thoughtfully at that, Manakel replied, “Oh. Yes, well… looks can be deceiving.”
With that, the man snapped his fingers. As he did so, a sixth forcefield appeared at the very end. And in it were two figures: Sean and Vulcan. The boy had clearly been frozen in mid-shout, his expression startled.
“Sean!” I blurted, taking a step that way reflexively, the others all moving with me. Then I stopped. “But… where–”
Turning back, I froze. Because another figure stood beside Manakel. Rudolph. His shirt was stained with blood. Blood that fell from his sliced-open throat, while his utterly sightless eyes seemed to stare through me, accusing in their emptiness.
“What can I say,” Manakel announced offhandedly while laying his hand on the head of the boy he had murdered before letting his body simply fall to the floor in a heap.
“I only had six forcefields.”