THE GRAY EAGLE
Marion turned to face Kenny Hugo, dressed as usual in bright, dazzling attire, his aftershave a cloud hovering around him.
He gripped her by the shoulders, his eyes focused on the wall through which she’d just emerged.
“Let go!” She pulled from his grip and stepped back, hugging her handbag to her chest.
Kenny’s eyes darted from the wall now seemingly solid, to Marion and back again. She watched as his bewilderment transformed into understanding. He settled his gaze on the bag in Marion’s clutches. “I think you better come with me.”
Marion sidestepped him and made for the door. “Actually, I have somewhere else to be, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind, as it happens.” He gripped her again by the shoulders, forcing her to a halt. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re doing here and—” he glanced again at the wall from which she’d appeared “—where you came from?”
She tried again to escape his grasp, but this only made him grip her tighter.
“Where did you come from?” he repeated, now through gritted teeth.
There were footsteps and voices outside the corridor. Marion could have sworn one of them belonged to Mr. Nicholas.
She began to scramble and squirm, a blind panic rising inside her. It was bad enough that this fool had seen her here, but things would get desperately worse if Nancy or Nicholas stepped through the door. “Goddammit, let me go!”
“Listen here, missy. I’m giving you one last chance. Tell me what you’re doing here or I’m delivering you straight to Nancy.”
Marion would very much have liked to kick Kenny Hugo in the shins and be on her way, but she was running out of time. She didn’t know if she could trust this strange man; in fact, she was sure she couldn’t. But it was useless trying to escape, or pretend he hadn’t just seen her stepping out from a hole in the wall.
“I was looking for something,” she said quickly. “I’ll tell you what—” she took a breath, the first in a while “—but not now. I need to get back to my training session before anyone notices I’m not there.”
He laughed. She wasn’t sure why. “And where’s this training session taking place?”
“The field office. Now please, I really have to get going.”
“Fine,” he said. “But I’ll be waiting for you outside, and I’m warning you, if you try to get away I’ll—”
“Yes, I heard you the first time. Now out of the damn way!” She shoved past him, and this time he let her. She shot back up the tributary and into the Grand Corridor, thankfully bumping into no one and reaching the field office less than fifteen minutes later.
She collected herself before stepping into the foyer and through the door she and Bill were supposed to have entered together. Hopefully Bill had done as promised and disarmed the traps beyond because she didn’t have time to check. She dashed through and up a small staircase, along a corridor and into a bedroom without pausing.
“Finally!” Bill panted, stepping out from behind the bedroom wardrobe. “I’ve had to disarm the corridor trip wires five times!”
“Sorry,” Marion puffed. “Bit of a delay. The Time Lighter in the common room, was that you?”
Bill smiled.
“You’re brilliant, you know that?”
He smiled again as he adjusted a dial on a small clock that hung above the exit. “Did you find anything?”
“Yes. A lot.” She showed him the crystal vial and the strange fluid inside, filled with dots of silvery light.
“What the hell is that?”
But Marion couldn’t answer then. She waited for the dial to click three times. She and Bill both knew exactly how this particular trap worked, and as the third click came, they stepped quickly to the left. A long metal pole shot out from the center of the exit door.
“I’ll explain later. Someone saw me, by the way.”
“What?” Bill’s panic was evident.
“Don’t worry. I’ll sort it out.” She handed him the vial. “I think this is the answer to everything, so look after it. Keep it on you in case he searches me. And...don’t open it.”
“He? Who’s he?”
“The person who saw me!”
Bill looked irritated but obliged. He and Marion opened the exit door and stepped through at last.
“Good evening,” Rakes said as they exited. “What took you so long?”
“Sorry,” Marion said. “We took a few wrong turns.”
They followed Rakes back around to the front of the house. “Zero marks for that dismal performance, Lane, Hobb,” she said, noting it down on her clipboard. “It’s really not that hard, you know. And haven’t you both been through that door before? I frankly expected more from you two.”
Marion and Bill apologized and blamed their delay on nerves. Rakes didn’t look at all convinced but allowed them to leave without further interrogation.
As Marion and the others stepped into the corridor outside the foyer, Kenny appeared around the corner.
Marion leaned into Bill. “Don’t show anyone the vial and meet me at my room tonight after dinner.”
“All right, missy,” Kenny said as he caught sight of Marion. “Time you and I had a little chat.”
Reluctantly, Marion followed Kenny to the residence quarters, room thirty-one. He unlocked the door and ushered her inside. The room looked as if it’d been ransacked by an intruder. Clothes and books were strewn across the floor, gadgets across the bed, cigarette butts and a half-empty whiskey glass lay on the bedside table. The only thing that had any order was a shelf above the washbasin, where a vast collection of male grooming supplies were assembled in a neat row—oils, waxes, creams, cologne.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to an armchair while he ripped off his shirt, threw it on the floor and bent over the basin to wash his face.
Marion watched him, his back bent over the basin, taut muscles rippling beneath his skin. He straightened, dried his face, ran some wax through his hair, then turned around. She looked away as he picked a new shirt and pulled it on.
He settled on the edge of the bed, lit the oil lamp on his side table, then a cigarette. His eyes blazed with intensity. “Okay, Lane. I’ll go first.” He drew on his cigarette. “As you must know, Nancy hired me two weeks ago. She said she needed an outsider to have a look at an investigation they were struggling with at the agency. I know Frank, too, by the way. He and I met when he came to New York to help our agency with a case that involved a British citizen. It was a few years back and the details are unimportant. When I arrived here, Nancy said that while she’d induct me, as it were, she wasn’t going to be able to provide me with full disclosure on the case, just the essential details. All she said was that there’d been a murder, one of her employees, and that the circumstances surrounding the case had become complicated. She gave me a summary of what had happened and that Frank had been framed for the murder—”
“Framed?” A pool of cold sweat formed on Marion’s forehead.
Kenny smiled. “So you do know, I thought so.”
Marion gritted her teeth. She’d been so shocked by Kenny Hugo’s choice of words she’d forgotten to pretend that she, like the rest of the agency, didn’t know Frank was the one the High Council had recently accused of White’s murder.
“I’ve heard a rumor,” she lied. A plausible explanation at least.
“And do you think he did it?”
“Of course I don’t.”
Kenny nodded, apparently satisfied. “Good. Neither does Nancy, which is why she hired me to find an alternative suspect. Thing is, it hasn’t been the kind of investigation I’m used to. I haven’t been given free rein, haven’t really been given much of anything.” He exhaled. “It’s been all very hush-hush. I think she’s afraid that if anyone knows what I’m really here for, it’ll hinder the investigation.”
Marion didn’t say so, but she had a different theory as to why Nancy wasn’t flooding Kenny with case details. It wasn’t that she was protecting the fragility of the case, she was protecting the agency itself. If Kenny Hugo turned over one too many stones in his quest to find an alternative suspect, Nancy and the agency might find themselves in more trouble than they were already.
“And what has any of this got to do with me?”
Kenny exhaled a plume of smoke and threw back the entirety of his whiskey. “Please, Lane. It’s obvious you know more than you should. I won’t ask how. Frankly, I’m not interested in office politics.” He paused for a moment, perhaps considering if it were a good idea for him to say anything further.
Marion was tense. It was obvious now that if she wanted to continue with the investigation, she would need Kenny to trust her. And to some degree, she was going to have to trust him. She nodded, then began to explain about the camera in Frank’s office and how she’d witnessed the High Council trial.
Kenny looked less shocked than she’d expected him to be at the revelation. Perhaps after everything he’d seen and heard at the agency since his arrival, this was the least surprising. He played with the cigarette between his lips as he absorbed this new information. The muscles in Marion’s face began to twitch as she waited for him to speak.
Eventually he seemed to arrive at a decision. “All right,” he said, more to himself. He stubbed out his cigarette. “So where is it, then? The map, Lane. I know you have it.” He got up and took a step toward her.
Her stomach lurched. Her heart thumped. “I have no idea what—”
“Bullshit! I’ve been watching everyone. I know you and your little friend Hobb are in on this together, and I know you have the map.”
She said nothing.
“Let me put it to you like this. Either you give me the map and I’ll forget what I saw in the break room, and all the other things you’ve just told me, or you don’t and I take you straight to Nancy while we search your room.”
“You have no idea what you’re getting involved in,” Marion snapped. “It’s more complicated than Nancy will have you believe.”
Kenny sighed, pushing his fingers through his perfectly styled locks. “What is the problem here? You don’t trust me? You don’t trust Nancy? Don’t be a fool, Lane. Nancy is on Frank’s side.”
“How do you know that?”
“She hired me to clear his name!”
“It sounds more like she hired you to be her courier. You said it yourself, you have no idea what you’re doing in this investigation. Or why.”
“Nancy knew about the camera.”
“Excuse me?”
Kenny inhaled impatiently. “In the lock room. Nancy knew right away when White was murdered that she’d be able to know who did it just by analyzing the footage from the camera above the lock room gate. She removed the footage just hours after the murder and had a look. Alone.
“Of course, what she saw wasn’t what she expected. She confronted Frank in private. They were both in a panic. Nancy never believed Frank was guilty, not for a second, but there he was entering the lock room after White and running out just minutes later. Blood literally on his hands. That’s when she called me. She explained the situation and we discussed all the possibilities. I asked if there was any way the camera could have been manipulated, or someone could have slipped past without it registering. She said there was a possibility of the latter, though she thought it unlikely.
“Anyway, we weren’t getting anywhere with that line of thinking, so Nancy decided to focus her attention somewhere else. Motives. Why would someone want White dead? Yeah, White was a snitch, but she’d been that way for nearly nine years and it hadn’t got her killed. So what changed? That’s when Nancy brought up the idea of the map. She said she suspected there was a connection between a previous employee’s disappearance and the map and, somehow, both are linked to the murder. You see, Nancy believes the employee who disappeared had gone looking for something he never should have known about. She didn’t tell me all the details, only that she’d recently come to suspect this employee had found out about a highly guarded agency secret from an old map she’d once thought only existed in myth.” He paused, as if waiting for confirmation.
Marion tried to keep her body language neutral.
Maybe it worked, because Kenny went on regardless. “As I said, she didn’t go into the details, but she seemed pretty certain White’s killer was likely to have had the map at some point. So of course I was tasked with tracking it down. But we were running out of time. Nancy knew that Nicholas was determined to solve the case. He’d been scouring the lock room for clues, every day for hours at a time. Nancy couldn’t stop him, or remove the camera, because it would seem too suspicious. But she knew he’d find it eventually. And, as you now know,” he added with an air of exhaustion, “that’s exactly what happened. Nancy’s only choice was to hold a trial, though she knew the evidence against Frank was insurmountable. Her last option was to make use of the only loophole she had left and provide Frank with an extension period. Like I said, Nancy is on Frank’s side. And so am I.”
Marion considered this. Certainly, she believed that Nancy thought Frank was innocent, but did that necessarily mean she’d go to any lengths to clear his name? She wondered what Nancy would do if, by revealing the real killer’s identity, she’d be forced to reveal the fact that something sinister—something that appeared to have to do with chemical warfare—existed right beneath their feet?
“Fine,” she said, at last coming to the realization that as much as she’d have preferred to, she couldn’t clear Frank’s name on her own.
“Fine, you’ll give me the map?”
“I told you, I don’t know anything about a map.” A lie, of course. The map was still in her bedroom. “I do have something more interesting, however. And I’ll show you what it is.” It was a gamble. If Kenny couldn’t be trusted, she was about to destroy Frank’s last chance at retribution.
“Well, go on, then,” Kenny said as he smoothed a flick of wayward hair back into place.
Marion got up. “I don’t have it with me now.”
“Blazes, Lane. Are you serious?”
“Meet me in my room tonight and I’ll show you. And don’t tell anyone anything yet.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me—”
“If what I show you reaches the wrong ears,” she went on unperturbed, “it’ll either get us killed or fired. You included. And then there’ll be no one to clear Frank’s name.”
Kenny lit a second cigarette and began to pace. “Listen here, Lane. You’re not the one calling the shots. I saw you crawling from that gap in the wall, and I’m pretty sure I can go and see what’s down there myself.”
“Oh, really? I’d like to see you try. It’s snared. Do you know how to disarm trip wires? Do you know how to use any of the gadgets we use here? You need me.”
Kenny contemplated her, examined her. Marion was the one with everything to lose. Did he really need her? Could she really play that card? She looked around the room, properly for the first time, and noticed a pile of Professor Bal’s gadgets strewn haphazardly over the small single bed in the corner. A coil of Twister Rope had wrapped itself around a pillow, and a pile of screws and springs—the innards of a microdot camera—lay beside it. Two Workshop manuals were spread open on the side table, several pens and notepads accompanying them.
Marion sat on the edge of the bed and, in silence, began to reassemble the camera.
“What are you doing with that?” Kenny asked, somewhat unnerved.
“Demonstrating my point.” She slipped a reel of film into place and secured the camera’s backing. She handed it to him, now fully functional. “As I said. You need me.”
Kenny smiled. He looked genuinely impressed and, just for a moment and by just a fraction, the tightness in Marion’s chest eased.
“How do you know all this stuff? Haven’t you just been working here for three months?”
“Four,” she corrected him. “And most of it I’ve spent with Professor Bal in Gadgetry.”
“Okay, listen, Lane. I’ll play it your way for now. Lucky for you, Nancy is away at the moment—”
“What?” The churning ache in her stomach was back. “What do you mean she’s away?”
“Just for a few days. She had to consult with a colleague or something. My point is, I’m going to have to tell her when she returns...” He trailed off, something about his responsibilities as a detective. Marion had stopped listening. What could Nancy possibly have to do that was more important, more pressing, than finding the real murderer?
“Hey, Lane.” Kenny snapped his fingers in her face. “Did you hear what I said?”
She gazed at him absently.
“I’m going to tell Nancy whatever I need to as soon as she’s back. You understand?”
Marion didn’t reply. She looked at her watch. She was due in the library in five minutes, and if she didn’t show up and behave as if everything was normal, she’d blow it all. “I have to go.”
Kenny opened his mouth in protest. Marion spoke before he had a chance.
“Meet me in my room in the residence quarters, number twenty-six. Tonight after dinner. Come alone, and for Christ’s sake, don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”
Kenny considered this. The muscles in his jaw seemed to twitch with indecision, perhaps frustration, too. “I’ll see you there.” He began to pack away the array of gadgets on his bed, with some difficulty as a spool of Twister Rope had now caught him around the waist, pinning his right arm firmly behind his back.
“Tug the ends in opposite directions,” Marion said as she turned to leave. “It’ll demagnetize them. I’ll see you tonight.” She left without pausing to check he’d heard, or whether the Twister Rope had overpowered him yet.
“Bill, this is Kenny. Kenny, Bill.” Marion made quick work of the introductions as the two men arrived at her room later that evening. A part of her had hoped Kenny wouldn’t show, that he was still entangled in a spool of Twister Rope. She hadn’t truly accepted the fact that Frank’s fate now lay partially in Kenny’s hands. And while she knew she had no choice but to trust him, the notion disturbed her.
Bill looked similarly unnerved by the new addition to their investigation.
Kenny seemed nothing less than outraged. “You can’t be serious?” he snapped, eyeing Bill. “You just told me I shouldn’t tell anyone about this meeting.”
Marion closed and locked the bedroom door. “Bill knows everything I know. I’m not shutting him out now.”
The two men sized each other up. Bill, just as tall as Kenny but half his width, shook his head. Kenny rolled his eyes. Marion ignored them both.
“Right.” She held out her hand to Bill. “The vial?”
He scowled at Kenny with obvious distrust.
“We don’t have a choice, Bill. Just hand it over.”
He passed her the vial and slunk off to sit on the edge of the bed.
“This is what I discovered beneath the break room,” Marion began, uncorking the vial and handing it first to Bill, then to Kenny. She poured a droplet onto the desk in front of her. The droplet shimmered and vibrated as soon as it came into contact with the table. The silvery particles, now awoken from their liquid state, were quickly shifting into a wall of gas. As the substance rose into the air, Marion’s eyes began to sting and water.
“What the blazes?” Kenny lowered his face into the mist.
Marion pushed him away. “Careful how much you inhale. I’m not sure how it works yet. More than a drop and you’ll be disorientated, almost blind.” She waited for the effects of the substance to fade before continuing. “There seems to be some sort of laboratory down there, in the tunnels beyond the Border, and the cellar beneath the break room leads right to it.” She passed Kenny a tentative glance, hoping he wouldn’t ask how she’d discovered this tunnel. He said nothing, so she continued. “I didn’t have time to go through everything, but I found enough evidence to suggest—” She paused, doubting herself. It was as if the past few hours had been a dream, some strange half reality. But no, there could be no mistaking what she saw in that grim, dank pit. She looked at Bill, then Kenny. “It looked as if it were the re-creation of some failed chemical weaponry experiment from the war. Some sort of bomb they were trying to make with an explosive that, well, that I’ve never seen or heard of before.”
“Jesus.” Bill rubbed his forehead. “And this is part of it?” He pointed at the vial.
“Yes, definitely.” She ripped a piece of paper from the notepad in her bag and began to sketch a simplified version of the diagram she’d seen in the laboratory. “I recognized the mechanism’s design only because it’s almost identical to that of a Time Lighter, which is really just a safer version of a simple clockwork bomb.” She went on, despite the confusion on Kenny’s and Bill’s faces. “Clockwork bombs have been used for ages, all throughout history. They’ve been used for political sabotage, terrorism. Most recently on United Airlines Flight 629.” She looked at Kenny to elaborate.
He hesitated before answering. “It was placed in the luggage compartment, killed forty-four people midflight.”
“Right,” Marion said. “And that’s just one of many examples. Delayed action clockwork bombs were also used in the war, both by the British and Germans. They’re simple and devastating. Explosives detonated by a timer, even a simple wristwatch.” She pointed at her diagram. “But this...this is different.”
“Different how?” Bill asked.
“Well, in two ways. First, the type of explosive used. Most clockwork bombs use dynamite, or some variation. This bomb was designed to be loaded with something I’ve never heard of before.” She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to recall the exact phrasing. “An alchemical explosive, fifteen times more powerful than dynamite and laced with something acidic, erosive.”
“Alchemical,” Bill murmured. He stared into the distance for a while. “Christ...you were right. The group of alchemists who were exiled by the church?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, it might have started with them but... I did a bit of research this afternoon in between my shifts. Apparently there were a group of chemists who worked at Porton Down in Salisbury—”
Bill frowned. “The government facility?”
Marion nodded. “Right, where scientists have been testing chemical and biological weapons for decades. But in the late thirties, there was a group of chemists who became interested in more fringe experiments, substances and concoctions produced by the ancient and mostly forgotten methods of alchemy. Obviously, there wasn’t much I could find in the archives about this group. All I know is that they left Porton Down soon after the war began. Apparently they were fired for nonadherence to general protocol. Whatever that means.”
“Left and went where?” Kenny asked.
“No one seems to know. The group vanished from society, every last member. No record of where they went or even if they’re still alive. Almost as if the earth swallowed them up.”
“They came here,” Bill said.
Kenny was glancing from Marion to Bill with a look that suggested he understood what Marion had explained, he just wasn’t certain he believed it. “And the other difference? You said there were two differences between the diagram’s design and a normal clockwork bomb.”
Marion turned again to the tiny crystal vial. “Well, this. It seems to be part of the mechanism, part of the bomb’s design.” She held up the simplified sketch. “You see here.” She pointed at a small depression in the rear of the bomb’s outer casing. “There was an arrow that pointed to this, indicating the insertion point of something they referred to as the Gray Eagle. According to the diagram’s instructions, the Gray Eagle is also attached to the timer, but set to be released just moments before the explosive is ignited by the fuse.”
“What the hell is a Gray Eagle?” Kenny asked.
“This, Kenny.” She held up the vial.
“Bloody hell.” Bill looked up. He hesitated for a moment, perhaps as he pieced together what Marion had said. “The perfect weapon, isn’t it? The stuff in the vial is released moments before the explosive detonates. It’ll disorientate, maybe even blind everyone in range. Then boom. Before you know what’s going on, you’re turned to ash.”
The room fell silent. Even though Marion already understood, the realization of what she’d uncovered was only now truly sinking in.
Kenny was the first to speak again. “Shit.” He stubbed out his cigarette, removed a hip flask from his bag and threw back a large sip of its contents. “You think this has anything to do with White’s murder?”
“I know it does.”
“Yeah?” Kenny prompted.
Marion turned to Bill instead. “Remember I told you the camera above the lock room gate was an infrared sensor?”
Bill nodded. “Turns on when it detects body heat.” He was beginning to understand. “In order to bypass the camera, you’d have to lower your body temperature just a few degrees and—” He picked up the crystal vial once more.
“Exactly,” Marion said. “It was something I’d been trying to understand for a while. How could anyone other than Frank have murdered Michelle White? How did anyone get past the camera without it picking them up? Now I realize they didn’t. It wasn’t that the camera didn’t see them, it’s just that it didn’t switch on.”
Bill held the vial tight in his palm. “It’s cold.” He looked at Marion, then spoke more hastily. “You think someone could have used it on themselves?”
“I don’t see why not. You could apply just a few drops to your clothes, then make sure your nose and mouth are covered to prevent inhalation. You’d block enough infrared emissions to trick the camera, and even if you bumped into anyone along the way, they’d be so disorientated they wouldn’t realize what they’d seen.” She paused to take a breath. “Frank said that when he was in the lock room the night of the murder, he sensed something odd in the air. His eyesight was blurred, he felt disorientated. Whoever the real killer was, there’s no doubt they were using the Gray Eagle as a disguise.”
Bill looked only half convinced. “But what was the killer, and White for that matter, doing in the lock room in the first place? You said nothing was removed from the drawers. The letter she received that night? We still don’t know what that said, or who sent it?”
“No. But it has to be connected to all this.” It was the final piece of the puzzle and one that Marion hadn’t had time to consider just yet. “We can still assume the killer didn’t know about the camera above the lock room gate, but considering they were using the disguise, anyway, it means they must have been doing something in there they didn’t want anyone to see.”
Again, the trio went silent and Marion was sure that Bill and Kenny were considering, as she had done all day, the implications of what this meant.
It was Kenny who broke the silence. “So, we’re certain that whoever’s been producing these bombs is also the one who killed White?”
Marion nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“And any ideas on who it could be?”
“Not yet.” Marion turned to Bill, who passed her a cautionary glance. “I’m uncertain of who to trust, of who we can tell without risking the investigation.”
“We have to tell Nancy,” Bill interjected. “I mean, she can’t be involved, surely not?”
Marion looked at Kenny. “Is there any way we can contact Frank? Ask him what to do?”
“Of course not. He’s locked up and under twenty-four-hour surveillance. You pass information like this to him, you’re passing it to Nicholas and the council. No, Hobb is right.” He gestured flippantly at Bill. “We tell Nancy. There’s no other option.”
Marion considered arguing, but really, she didn’t know what else to do.
“Listen, Lane,” Kenny went on. “You’ve done well. Nancy will be grateful and I’m sure she’ll know where to take this next. She’s supposed to be back tomorrow morning, anyway.”
“And we’re just supposed to wait around until then? Do nothing?”
“For now, yes.” Kenny offered Marion a cigarette. She refused. “How about this. I’ll speak to Nancy as soon as she’s back. I’ll even leave you and Hobb out of it. It’ll make me look better, anyway.” He smirked. Marion bit her tongue. “I’ll meet you back here tomorrow at lunch with an update. Okay?”
She grunted a noncommittal reply. It wasn’t really okay. No matter what Bill or Kenny believed, she still wasn’t convinced Nancy or the High Council could be trusted. If her assumptions about what she’d uncovered were accurate, it meant that the agency had been used as a chemical weaponry laboratory before Nancy had converted it into a private detective agency after the war. It was obvious Nancy knew about the weaponry project, so why had she not figured out that the substance in the crystal vial was how someone had got past the camera?
A scraping sound pulled Marion from her thoughts. She turned to the wall beside her bedroom door. A post tray she hadn’t even known existed emerged from the stone facade, bearing a piece of paper—a crisp white letter, written in silvery-green ink.
Marion read the letter out loud.
“Dear All,
“You are cordially invited to the first annual Miss Brickett’s Circus Ball!
“Join us for a night of extravagance and excitement with a special performance from Thomson and Thorpe (ex-Inquirers and trained acrobats) as well as acts from a range of Professor Bal’s clockwork masterpieces!
“Drinks and food will be provided.
“Date: Friday, April 25
“Time: 7 o’clock
“Location: the ballroom
“Dress: formal/black tie
“We hope to see you there!”
“What the hell is a circus ball?” Kenny asked.
Marion didn’t answer, though the cogs of her frazzled mind began to turn. This must have been Professor Bal’s classified assignment, the thing he’d been so busy with the past few days. But was it a coincidence it was happening now, just as Nancy had mysteriously disappeared? She read the invitation again. Maybe it was exhaustion, or the remnants of angst from her trip into the cellar beneath the break room, but something about the event troubled her.