Nightmare Academy (40 page)

“It'll be all about power,” said Elisha.

“And we will have it,” said Bingham with a wink. “Good-bye.”

Bingham crossed the room and disappeared through the door.

The thin technician with the ponytail came over to Elisha, said, “I'm very sorry,” and threw a lever.

With a neck-wrenching spin, the whole platform where Elisha was sitting rotated until she was facing the wall behind her. A panel in the wall opened, the platform pitched forward, and Elisha tumbled into a tight, elevator-sized cavity.

It was an elevator. It lurched upward, rotated, came to a stomach-turning halt, opened, pitched forward, and threw her out.

There were shouts and squeals of alarm. “It's Sally!” “Where did she come from?” “Is that the way out of here?”

She looked up from the floor and saw Britney, Melinda, Ramon, Tom Cruise, and so many others gathering around her, their faces longing for answers. “What's happening, Sally?” “Where are we?” “What's going to happen?”

The elevator was gone, of course, hidden behind a panel that closed immediately. She got to her feet, looking at all the frightened faces looking back at her, all the kids of different sizes, shapes, colors, and backgrounds, clothing askew, hands and faces dirty from the big struggle with the gate and the front door.

“There were guards. Security
people, 1 guess. They rounded up
everybody. We're all here.”

Warren stepped forward, still blotchy with white paint, and extended his hand. “Glad you're okay, Sally.”

She appreciated his handshake. “So they got you, too.”

Warren nodded, exchanging a glance with Tom Cruise and the other kids who weren't here by choice. “There were guards. Security people, I guess. They rounded up everybody. We're all here.”

Nearby was Brett, standing in the middle of the vast room, exploring the white, featureless walls with frightened eyes, looking helpless. Rory and his big gang of toughs were clustered together, looking scared—they wouldn't be slugging and bullying their way out of this problem.

At the far end of the room, standing alone and looking very small in this huge, empty shell of a house, was “Alexander.” Elisha took a good, long look at him, for the picture spoke volumes. So this was Alexander, the great leader, and this was his mighty revolution! He had made it to the top, to the pinnacle of power. He'd taken the mansion.

And the mansion was empty.

“My name isn't Sally,” she said. “It's Elisha Springfield. Jerry's real name is Elijah, and he's my brother. And I guess you've figured it out: This whole thing was one big lie, and
Harold Carlson
hasn't conquered anything.”

Harold “Alexander” Carlson just stood there, speechless, crestfallen, staring at the walls while his followers stared at him. He had no orders to give, no new visions for the future.

BOOM!
An explosion, close enough to shake the floor!

They ran to the windows and could see a ball of fire and billowing smoke where dorm A once stood. At the very edge of the campus, a huge yellow bulldozer was rumbling and squeaking onto the field.

“OOOH!” The sound of a faraway explosion totally rattled the little man. He jumped from the bench, jerked back by the handcuff around his wrist. “Okay! Okay! Nobody hired me to take a rap for murder. I was just supposed to sit there in the hotel in case anybody came in asking questions. I didn't know—”

“Be quiet!” Farmer yelled. They were his first words since being arrested.

“I didn't know they were going to kill the kids, I swear!”

Nate, Sarah, and Morgan closed in on the frightened man.

“Keep going,” said Nate, and it was far more threat than request.

“They never killed the kids before. All the other times, all the other years, they were signing up kids who volunteered. They had the kids for two weeks and then the kids went home and everything was okay, no problem, nobody asking questions, nothing.” He took a breath, his eyes searching the ground. “I should have suspected something when they started signing up runaways, kids who were already missing.”

Nate took hold of both his shoulders and locked eyes with him. “What are you saying?”

“It's the fifth year, the last experiment. I don't know what they're doing up there, but this time they have to erase everything—not just the campus. I mean the kids,
everything"

“How do we get there?”

“The road's gone. They took that out yesterday. There's a tunnel . . .”

It was all Nate could do to keep from crushing the answer out of the man. “WHERE?”

The man rattled the handcuff. “I'll take you there, just let me loose!”

Elijah was getting toward the end of his strength, singing crazily jumping suddenly, trying to be unpredictable, but his theory was proving out.

Whenever he paused to rest, the warm, welcoming environment of the family room of a big log house surrounded him like a fluffy comforter, steady stable, and unchanging. The girl in the chair kept right on smiling and babbling, her fingers still tapping away the same little coded message.

Whenever he acted crazy, doing new, unpredictable behaviors, the environment got sketchy, the textures foggy, the sensory illusions of smell, touch, and sound dull.

Most of all, the whole world froze for a minuscule moment every six seconds, like clockwork.

So Elijah realized he could still
know
things, and what he knew right now was that the computer running this mad ride was reloading and processing information on a six-second cycle, a fact he could detect only because he'd been in this place for so long he could hear it and feel it.

As long as everything happened predictably like one step following another, an exhale following an inhale, a scratch following an itch, the computer could handle it.

But if he gave the computer new information it wasn't expecting—silly songs with the last word changed or not rhyming when it should, or goofy antics that weren't predictable—then the computer had to process all that new information, which took time, and this horrible, crazy world would actually
blink,
just for an instant, every six seconds.

It was that blink he was watching for as he made a blithering fool of himself, and after several crazy, exhausting cycles, he knew when to expect it, like dancing to the rhythm of music. His dear sister was right; behind the couch where he'd been lying, where usually he saw only a wall of huge logs, the round shape of a lens would flash into view, quick like the click of a shutter, every six seconds.

The projector, at six o'clock.

“Okay” he said to himself and anyone listening, “one more time.”

He jumped to one side of the girl's chair, then back, then back where he started, and then—jumped in place, whooping out a stupid song he hoped the computer hadn't heard before—"Back up the batter and
Whoof!
In the flutter and wowie, look at us bang on the roof!"—it all had to be new information!

The wall blinked after six seconds. He saw the lens. He hopped, went to his knees and clucked, stood up again, spun in a circle—

The wall blinked again. Now he was sure where the lens was, even if he couldn't see it.

He grabbed the chair the girl was sitting in and yanked it high over his head. The girl remained exactly where she was, sitting in midair, still smiling at him and telling him he could create his own truth any way he wanted it.

With all his strength, and quite glad about it, he brought the chair down where the projector was hiding and felt the chair connect with something. There was a crash and the tinkling of glass. The girl sitting in midair began to flutter, her voice turned to static, and then, like a flame blown out, she vanished.

Now all
this
was new information, too. The pleasant family room was looking foggy, out of focus, and within six seconds Elijah caught sight of a
real
wall beyond the log wall—and the steel rungs of a ladder.

He ran forward, arms outstretched, eyes locked open to see the next blink.

There were the rungs again, embedded in the wall just two feet to the left, within reach!

His hand locked onto a steel
rung that wasn't there.