When Sanjay had decided to go to the basement, this wasn’t what he’d had in mind. The CAPPers patted down their coat pockets and then herded them downstairs. Without buzzing fluorescent lights or windows, the darkness in the basement was inky black. Sanjay’s mind raced desperately, wondering what the CAPPers were going to do now.
If he and his friends were right about what they had heard, the CAPPers had the teachers and Officer Mendoza down here too. As far as Sanjay could tell, he and his friends had been the only ones to notice Officer Mendoza’s absence and to worry about her. Would anyone notice if they were missing? And even if they did, Max would probably just reassure them with the same sorts of lies he had been telling all along.
Sanjay kept coming back to the same question. Why? How did the students and faculty fit into CAPP’s survival plan? What benefit were a bunch of high schoolers during an alien invasion?
The basement was smaller than Sanjay had thought it would be—only an open square space with two doors and walls made of unpainted cinder blocks. A couple of days ago, this area would have been humming with electricity and the whirring of machinery. Now, it was oppressively quiet, as well as damp and cold.
Max walked ahead of them, head down as though he refused to meet their eyes. Sanjay felt his face flush with anger. The least Max could do was acknowledge that he had betrayed them.
They stopped in front of a door marked storage. Directly across from it was another door marked boiler room.
One of the CAPPers unlocked the storage door and shoved Sanjay, Chloe, and Luis inside.
The room was dark and filled with looming shadowy shapes, which Sanjay realized were extra desks, chairs, folding tables, and other school furniture. Some of them were piled nearly as high at the ceiling.
Max followed them in, silhouetted against the candlelight in the hallway. He leaned on a desk near the door. “You’ll be safer down here. We can’t have you running around the school unsupervised; it’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous for us, or for you?” Chloe snapped.
Max’s face was grim. “I’m here to protect you.”
“You can cut the act,” said Sanjay coldly. “We know you’ve locked up Officer Mendoza and the teachers because they weren’t on board with you being in charge here.”
Max shook his head. “If you’d all just trusted me, things wouldn’t have gotten out of control like this.” With that, Max turned around and left the room, closing the door behind him. They heard the key turn in the lock, and then it was quiet.
It was absolutely dark in the room. Sanjay heard the clatter of a desk followed by Luis complaining about his bruised shins.
And then he heard a sound that gave him hope: the whirring of a hand-crank flashlight.
As the light blossomed, Sanjay and Luis turned with amazement to look at Chloe.
She gave a modest little shrug. “They searched our coat pockets, but they didn’t think to check my sweatshirt.”
“I could totally see you leading the rebellion against the Visitors,” Sanjay said.
Chloe shrugged again. “At least we can see now, but we’re still trapped.”
“Actually,” said Luis, taking the screwdriver out of his boot, “I think I can get us out.”