“What the hell was that?” hisses Gnat, folded against some low cabinets in a painfully awkward position.
“Can... someone... maybe... help... me...?” drips Slug’s voice in long, slow threads from somewhere higher up. When my eyes finally find him, I see him hanging helplessly over the blackboard. How did he even get up there? I, myself, ended up unceremoniously hard against a steel radiator. From Shadow, there is no trace, of course.
“I... really... could... use... some... help...” Slug pleads as the whole blackboard slowly topples over and crashes to the floor. “Ow... that... hurts...” Gnat walks over and helps him back to his feet (he’s not as bad as he wants us to think he is), suspiciously looking around. He pulls up his nose. “It smells weird in here.”
He’s right. It does smell weird, like a room that hasn’t been used in a very long time. Not moldy or damp, but the opposite: bone dry, filled with dust and air that hasn’t been stirred for years. It also smells of something else, something I can’t quite make out—something that reminds me of my old chemistry kit after an experiment gone wrong or a decaying mouse.
“Shadow, can you make...” Even before I finish my question, the light comes back on, revealing a surprisingly excited Shadow, her big brown eyes shining like those of an explorer who has just discovered the mythical treasure of a long-lost civilization. When I look around, I immediately understand why. This is the weirdest classroom ever. It's not the room itself, but the mountain of strange objects, devices, books, and other... stuff, stacked in an unstable pile almost reaching the ceiling.
Quietly, she pulls out an object that looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Maybe it’s a tool, although if it is, it’s unclear what it would be used for. It looks historic and futuristic at the same time. Carefully, she puts it back making sure the unstable mountain doesn’t collapse.
All this time, Slug has been sitting motionless on the floor, like a round Buddha. “Do... you... know... where... we... are...?” he breaks his silence. I don’t respond, knowing that interrupting him will only make this take longer. “This... is... the... science... classroom...” He is right, I realize with a shock. This is the classroom we passed so many times, unable to resist the temptation to check if it was really locked. It always was. So, why did it open now?
When I look around with renewed interest, my attention is immediately drawn to the desk behind the mountain of objects. Not an ordinary desk but a magnificent one, a heavy wooden top, resting on a black metal frame engraved with symbols and figures I’ve never seen before. They look like hieroglyphs, but they’re not. It’s completely empty except for a big stack of paper bound together with a heavily decorated metal hinge. The bottom of the stack seems to be scorched, as if it has been rescued from a fire.
It turns out to be a long, very long, list of names, rigorously organized in two columns: the left one written in green ink, the right one in red. Every 20 to 50 lines, the handwriting changes. Some are strong and angular, some fragile and shaky, some embellished with big ornamental curves, and some are nothing more than blunt, no-nonsense capitals.|
“What now?” I ask, unsure what to do next. “Take it with us? Hand it in?”
“Are you crazy, Sulfur-head? And expose ourselves as burglars? I thought you were smarter than that.” For once, Gnat’s reaction helps me make up my mind.
“Alright, alright, it was just a thought.”
I throw the list back on the desk and turn to the door. “We need to hurry,” I urge. “That destroyed corridor will have caused all kinds of commotion by now, and when we turn out to be missing, some teacher will surely connect the dots. Not all of them are stu...”
Finally, my brain catches up with my eyes. I run back to the table. Looking over my shoulder, Gnat releases a sharp hiss when I point out the green name that I know all too well, hardly recognizable in the tangle of scribbled lines... my own name.