I went for one back door. The professor took the other. By the time I circled around and got to the stage, things had definitely changed. For starters, the clouds were shorting out. The images kept repeating themselves, floating from the pipe to the students, from the pipe to the students. The choir had quit singing and the audience was anything but happy.
“A hoax?” someone yelled. “This is all a hoax?”
Another shouted, “We’ve been watching a light show?”
Of course, Slick did his best to fix things. “Please, we’re currently having some technical difficulties.” And all the teachers, about a dozen in the front row, were on their feet trying to quiet everyone.
Cowboy had unstrapped Sridhar and was holding off the other guard. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you,” he kept saying. “We’ll just be takin’ this boy and be on our way.”
I moved to the kid and helped him to his feet.
“What happened?” he mumbled. “What’s going on?”
Slick spotted us. “Stop them!”
“You two best be going, Miss Brenda,” Cowboy said.
I looked into the auditorium and saw the other guard coming for us.
“What about—”
“I’ll be there in a jiffy. Me and the fellas just need a little talk.”
I looked over to see Andi waving from the side exit. “Over here!”
The kid and I started toward her. The lights flickered again. The crowd had grown even more restless and was getting to their feet.
“My child wasted two years of her life here?”
“A fraud. This is all a fraud!”
“You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.”
“I am a lawyer!”
Slick and the teachers definitely had their hands full. Still, he managed to shout at us, “I’ve engaged the security field, so you’re going nowhere!”
We joined Andi and stepped into the hallway as Slick repeated, “I said you’re going no—”
The door slammed shut behind us.
We crossed the hallway and opened the exit door. The yard was in front of us. The gate forty feet away.
“Now what?” I said.
“We followed a spiral,” Andi said.
“What?”
“Last night, we circled the building. We followed a spiral path to this location.”
“A path we can’t see without those special glasses.” I turned to the kid. “Unless you got them now.”
He shook his head.
“Wait a minute!” Andi said. “That pattern you drew of the numbers? The one identical to the creamer in the professor’s coffee. Do you have it?”
I pulled the envelope from my pocket and handed it to her.
“What?”
“The route.”
“That’s no route. It’s numbers and dates. You said so yourself.”
“And it’s the route.”
“It can’t be both.”
“Maybe not in three dimensions. But if Trenton is correct about multiple dimensions, then of course it is.”
“Of course?”
“Multiple dimensions function at multiple levels. Therefore, they should have multiple meanings. They must have multiple meanings.” She pointed where the arc of the number met the circle. “If this is our current location, we must follow this exact route back to the gate.”
It made no sense to me. So what else was new?
The door opened. Lots of noise came from inside as Cowboy stepped out.
“The guards?” I asked. “They cool?”
“They’ll be a little cranky when they wake up, but yes ma’am, everything’s good.”
“And the professor?” Andi said.
“Right behind me.”
“Let’s go, then.” Andi held out the diagram as we headed into the yard. We’d gone about twenty feet when the professor showed up at the door.
“Wait for me!” he yelled.
“The path!” Andi shouted. “Avoid the field by following our path.”
The old guy froze. Guess he didn’t want an encore of last night’s performance.
I saw where we’d been. “Keep going,” I said. “I’ll go back and get him.”
“Stay on the path,” Andi repeated.
I nodded. When I arrived, the professor was his usual sunny self. “I hope she knows where she’s going.”
The lights in the building beside us flickered.
“What did you do?” I said.
“There was some extra Jamba Juice.”
“And?”
“I found the main circuit room.”
We headed after the others. We got about halfway when the door flew open and both security guards piled out.
“Let’s move.” I grabbed the professor’s arm and pulled him along faster.
“Be careful,” he groused. “Stay on the path! Careful!”
The guards gained on us. The fact they didn’t drag around a whiny windbag made it easier. That, and their John Lennon glasses.
Andi, Cowboy, and the kid reached the gate. We were just feet behind them when I suddenly thought of baby Monique. Only now she wasn’t a baby. She was the same age she’d be today. They had her locked in some dark room. A closet. And she was sobbing. Her face streaked with tears. All alone.
It was only a thought, but so real I had to gasp, “Monique . . .”
Over her tears I heard another voice. Old and white: “You’ll stay in there until you wash all those dishes.”
“Momma?” she cried. But not for them. For me. “Momma!”
I could barely catch my breath. “Monique, is that—”
“No!” The professor yelled. I looked up to see him grab his head. “Not again! Somebody help me!”
“They changed the security field!” Andi shouted.
“Momma . . .” More images flickered. Sharper. Clearer. Monique stood barefoot in a cold, wet cellar. She was shivering. Hard. Her arms raised. To me! “Momma? Momma, help me!”
“Oh, baby—”
“Grab my hand, Professor!” Andi shouted. “Grab my—”
“I can’t remember!” he cried. “I don’t—”
“Grab my hand!”
“Miss Brenda!” Cowboy yelled.
I blinked. Saw Cowboy reaching for me. He was six feet away. The professor was beside me, doubled over.
“Miss Brenda!”
I fought off Monique’s image long enough to grab the professor by the waist.
“Help me!” he cried. “Help—”
It took all my strength, but I flung him past me. He stumbled out of the field and into Andi’s arms.
“Momma!”
I spun back to Monique.
“Momma, it hurts. Momma, they’re hurting me! Momma—”
“Miss Brenda!”
I tried focusing on Cowboy’s voice, pushing her out of my mind. But I couldn’t. How could I, when what I feared most was happening right in front of me?