AS THE FLOOR ROSE UP toward him, Fort instinctively held his breath, like he was about to dunk himself underwater. His chest passed through the tile, and he decided to let the air out to experiment with something.
When his face reached the floor, he opened his mouth to breathe in, to see if it was possible while passing through a solid object. Unfortunately, there was no air inside the floor, and for a moment he began to panic as his body decided it must be drowning.
Thankfully, he emerged from the other side a moment later and took in a nice, deep breath. Jia pulled him down to the ground, and he found himself standing in Dr. Ambrose’s classroom.
“You can’t breathe inside things!” he said, his heart still racing.
The other three just looked at one another. “Are you usually able to?” Jia asked him.
“Well, no,” he said, turning red. “It’s all just strange. Like how are we breathing now, if we’re insubstantial and can’t touch anything? How do our lungs take in air?”
“It’s magic,” Rachel said. “If we couldn’t breathe, the spell would have killed the first people to try it.”
“Maybe it’s ingrained in the spell,” Jia said. “But can we discuss that later? We still have a bunch of floors to go, and I don’t want to get caught.” She glanced around. “The only thing on this floor other than our classroom is the Healing bandage storage. Next one down should be the stronger magical items.”
“I really like this side of you!” Rachel said, nodding with respect.
Now it was Jia’s turn to blush. “I had to practice somewhere.”
“So bad,” Rachel said, laughing lightly. “How can you even live with yourself?”
Jia didn’t answer; she just sank slowly down through the floor again, steadily avoiding Rachel’s gaze. Rachel waited for a moment, then dove through after her, and this time Cyrus offered his hand to Fort.
“Maybe floating just isn’t your thing,” Cyrus said as Fort took his hand.
“Apparently, none of this is,” Fort told him as the other boy slowly descended, pulling Fort with him.
At least Colonel Charles believed in him, that there was some power to be awakened inside of him. Hopefully he’d be better suited to whatever that was than Healing.
They landed in a room filled with filing cabinets, and Jia led the way to the door, peeking just her face through at first to make sure there weren’t any guards around. Cyrus confirmed they were out of camera sight too, so Jia passed through the door and then motioned for them to follow.
They found themselves in a long hallway with metal doors to their right and the elevator to their left. The metal doors were all locked by elaborate, highly technological locks, which couldn’t stop their ethereal forms from peeking into the first few rooms.
“Whoa,” Rachel said, pulling her head back out of the first door. “I’ve never seen so many fireball bullets. There are thousands of boxes in there! Who had time to make all of these? There’s no way we did them all.”
Fort threw a look at Jia, but she ignored him.
The next door held what looked like plastic egg carton containers, each one labeled with various Telepathy spells: MEMORY/THOUGHT SHARING, SLEEP INDUCEMENT, and more.
“She wouldn’t be on this level,” Jia said as Fort started to look in another door. “Too many people can come down here, especially the military. Dr. Opps doesn’t like to give access to anyone he doesn’t trust, so she’d have to be at least one more floor down.”
After three more floors turned out to be empty, however, Fort began to wonder how paranoid Dr. Opps really was . . . and how far down the complex extended. Each of the floors had been filled with similar vaults to the ones holding the fire bullets, but none were in use.
Two floors later, Fort was almost ready to give up.
“Maybe she’s somewhere else on the base?” he said to Jia, who seemed to be getting more annoyed with each new empty floor.
“She has to be here,” she said, slamming her fist through a wall without leaving a mark. “There’s nowhere else that’s anywhere near as secure.”
“What if she’s really not here at the school?” Rachel asked. “It’s not like we have any solid proof—”
“No, she’s close,” Fort told her, hoping he was telling the truth. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”
As Jia and Rachel both disappeared through the floor, Cyrus stopped Fort for a moment. “Just so you know, we’re running out of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, before we left, I thought I saw Sebastian still awake,” Cyrus said. “So I did a quick look into his future, and he should be reaching Dr. Opps’s door any minute now.”
Fort’s eyes widened. “He’s turning us in?”
Cyrus nodded. “I probably should have mentioned that sooner, huh? I kind of forgot when Rachel showed up.”
Fort squeezed his eyes closed and took a deep breath. “Yes, that might have been helpful. How long do we have?”
Cyrus’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said, looking nervous. “Everything is fuzzy now. Either we’re too close to the books upstairs, or something else is going on.” He frowned. “But I got us to the Viewing Room last night without having this problem. Weird, huh?”
“So there could be guards here at any moment?” Fort said, sighing deeply. “Great.”
“Should we turn around? We could probably sneak out before they find us.”
For a moment, Fort considered it. But if they backed out now, there’d be no way he was ever getting another chance, both because Jia would never agree to it, and Dr. Opps would for sure be kicking him out of the school just for leaving the dorm at night.
“Nope, we keep going,” Fort said. “Our only hope is to find Sierra. Sebastian doesn’t know that Jia and Rachel came with us, so at least they should be okay.”
Cyrus nodded, then took Fort’s hand and floated them both down into the floor. “Maybe she’s on this next floor anyway!” he said optimistically.
Five floors later, even Fort was starting to wonder if Sierra actually existed, let alone was somewhere in the building. “I don’t get it,” Jia said, staring around in the darkness. “Cyrus, you can’t see anything about her in our future?”
He shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “It’s all just a blur from this point forward. Something’s wrong.”
The others shared a look. “Maybe it’s time to give up,” Rachel suggested.
“One more floor,” Fort said, knowing he’d continue on even if the others all left. “We can’t give up now.”
“Okay, but if we don’t find anything, we’re going to Dr. Opps and telling him everything,” Jia said. “Especially about how you stole my spells.”
Why bother, when he’ll be catching us down here any minute now? Fort thought.
They descended through the floor, expecting more empty vaults . . . but this time they found just one door at the end of a very short hallway, mirrored by the elevator on the opposite side.
“Finally, something new!” Rachel said, and advanced to the door. She pushed her face through slowly, only to pull back suddenly, her eyes wide. “You guys have got to see this.”
Fort tried to move past her, but Rachel held him back. “Let me go first,” she said. “Just in case it’s dangerous. And don’t argue about it. We don’t have time.”
He started to object in spite of her words, but then stopped and nodded, waving her ahead. She was right, they didn’t have time. As soon as she was inside, he leaped into the door, his meager list of spells at the ready just in case he had to cast one quickly.
But instead of anything dangerous, the warehouse-sized room was filled with huge wooden crates. At the far end, a small set of stairs led down to a lowered floor, adding height to the ceiling for some of the taller crates.
“See?” Rachel said from across the room, pointing at the wall behind her. “Now this is the good stuff.”
Fort looked where she was pointing and felt his knees go weak.
Behind Rachel were large glass cases set into the wall, almost like the kind found in a museum. And just like in a museum, the cases were filled with skeletons.
But not the skeletons of dinosaurs or prehistoric animals.
“Are those . . . ?” Jia asked.
“Yup!” Rachel said proudly, pointing at what looked almost like a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton with wings. “They’re dragons.”