The Paladin Prophecy (31 page)

Silently this time. As he focused on quieting his footsteps and tracking the sounds of his pursuers, Will felt his senses tune up to a higher level of awareness. A sudden, specific sense of distance and vector of the sounds all around him, a 360-degree scan. Almost like a grid of the surrounding area forming in his mind’s eye.

As Will let himself drop deeper into this heightened perception, time seemed to slow. He saw his own footfalls before each touched down, and was able to make minute adjustments to avoid anything that might make a sound. He increased his speed, entering a zone where a preview of every move appeared on the “grid” before he committed to it. He felt like a weightless beam of light shooting through space.

Just like that, Will was back at the western shore, fifty yards from the dock. The dock was empty, his pursuers scattered all over the woods behind him. Without breaking stride, Will angled toward the dock.

He “saw” the move before he made it: leaping onto the pier from over ten feet away. As he ran, he pulled out his Swiss Army knife and flicked open its longest blade. Reaching the end of the dock, he soared out over the water. The blade sliced cleanly through the securing line as he landed, perfectly balanced, in the bow of the motorboat. Cut loose from the dock, the boat shot into open water, propelled by his momentum. Two steps to the stern, one pull on the starter, a rev of the throttle, and he was off, banking hard left.

Nick and Ajay splashed out to their knees as Will sluiced a path toward them. He slowed enough for the boys to haul themselves over the gunnels. Will ruddered hard right and zoomed off for the western shore.

Will felt his heightened state of awareness recede as they made their way across in silence. He felt shaky inside, similar to how he felt after “pushing pictures.”

So they’re related
, he thought.
The speed, the stamina, pushing pictures, and now this. I can do more. I can do a
lot
more
.

Their pursuers didn’t reach the water until they’d nearly crossed the lake. By the time they heard a powerboat behind them, Will had gunned the tender up onto a stretch of mainland beach. They ditched the boat as it stopped in the sand. With the flashlights, they quickly found the running track.

“What time is it?” asked Ajay.

“Ten-fifty. We’ll never make it back before curfew,” said Nick, panting. “Well,
Will
could make it.”

“We’ll make it,” said Will. “Guys, I just saw Lyle on the island.”

“What?”
said Ajay.

“I don’t know if he was in the tunnels or with the guards that came from the Crag, but he was looking for us.”

“Busted,” said Nick, pumping his fist.

“Whatever the hell’s going on,” said Will, “Lyle’s right in the middle of it.”

They ran in silence, fiercely. Will hung behind, pushing their pace as he listened for signs of pursuit. He heard a powerboat sweep by near where they’d landed, but it didn’t come ashore. They passed the Barn without incident.

Minutes later, they passed a security guard driving back in his cart outside Greenwood Hall—for once
without
a friendly smile—who watched them plow through the front doors, breathless, at exactly 10:59 p.m.

“First things first,” said Will as they ran upstairs. “We’re going to need a lot of coffee.”

PUZZLES

“These are French names,” said Elise, looking at the list.

“Duh,” said Nick.

“Eat your cake, Nick,” said Elise with a withering look.

“Lees, babe, I think we figured out they were
French
already, okay?” said Nick. “Except for that first one. Orlando.”

“And, pray tell, what kind of name is Orlando?” she asked.

“Hello?” said Nick. “It’s from
Florida
?”

Four of the roommates sat around the dining table; Ajay had gone to work on something in his room. Everyone but Will had their tablet on in front of them, although Nick was more focused on a slice of chocolate cake. They’d woken Elise and Brooke as soon as they returned and made coffee, and Will told them the whole story about the Peers and the Paladin, Lyle, and the tunnels to the Crag. Minus the monsters—Will thought it best to leave out any supernatural details until he was sure the girls were on board, and Nick and Ajay agreed. When Will was finished, Ajay transferred the photos Will had taken of the masks onto everyone’s tablets. Elise had lit up with interest throughout their account, but Brooke looked and acted remote. At least she was at the table, studying the photographs.

“You’re not here on scholarship, are you, Nick?” asked Will.

“I am totally on scholarship,” said Nick, taking another bite. “Man, I
loves
me some chocolate cake.”

“For gymnastics, not geography,” said Elise. “I’m half French, you nitwit. I speak and read French. My father’s French.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, what about your mom? She’s not French.”

“She’s Vietnamese, and she
speaks
French, and these are all, take my word for it, French names. Or more specifically, Frankish. From the Middle Ages.”

“Wicked,” said Nick. “So we know this much, then: They’re a bunch of middle-aged French dudes.”

Brooke touched Nick’s arm gently. “Please don’t talk anymore.”

“Guys,” said Will. “Concentrate. Once we figure out who the rest of the Peers are and what they’re up to, we may have the whole picture.”

“But it’s safe to say they’re
not
a bunch of middle-aged French dudes,” said Elise, glowering at Nick.

“Let’s focus on this insignia at the top of the list,” said Will, pointing to the photo he’d taken of it on Brooke’s tablet.

Brooke studied the image closely. “These look like they might be white chrysanthemums. We need a reference book on flowers.”

“Where will we get that at this time of night?” said Will.

“I’ll go to the library,” said Brooke, but she made no move to get up.

“How?” asked Will, puzzled.

“On my tablet,” she said.

“I thought they put the clamps on Internet access,” said Will.

“To outside servers,” said Brooke. “Not the ones on campus.”

“You
still
haven’t taken the tutorial?” asked Elise, incredulous.

“I haven’t had time,” said Will.

“Show him,” said Elise.

Brooke angled her tablet around for Will to see. The image on-screen—a high-def re-creation of their pod’s great room—didn’t startle him. He was getting used to these vastly superior graphics. This was something else.

Around the table sat three incredibly lifelike versions—virtual doubles—of Brooke, Elise, and Nick. And they were
looking
at him with all the poise and attention and—he didn’t know how else to put it—
personality
of their living counterparts.

“What in the world …,” said Will.

Elise, Brooke, and Nick laughed. The figures on-screen laughed along with them. None of their actions exactly synchronized with their real-life counterparts’ but they seemed eerily similar; it was like watching three pairs of big/small identical twins.

“What are those things?” asked Will.

“They’re called syn-apps,” said Brooke.

“Short for ‘synchronized synthetic applications,’ ” said Elise.

The fourth chair, where Will was sitting in real life—and where a version of “Will” would have completed the group—sat empty.

“So where am I?” asked Will.

“You haven’t taken the tutorial yet, dummy,” said Elise.

“Go to the library,” said Brooke to her screen. Brooke’s syn-app stood up from the table. The walls of their pod on her screen morphed seamlessly into towering stacks of a vast library. “Find a book on the symbolic significance of flowers.”

Her syn-app waved okay, in a way that seemed utterly Brookeian. Then she walked toward the stacks to find her objective. Will guessed that he was seeing nothing more than a sophisticated “waiting” screen while the computer searched a database, but the effect still floored him.

“Is that the real library?” asked Will.

“A
virtually
real one,” said Brooke. “A replica of the Archer Library, the main one on campus. With digital versions of all its books and archives.”

Will pointed to the figures of other “students” that Brooke passed, seated in chairs or at tables, browsing through shelves.

“So those are other students’ syn-apps, doing research online,” said Will.

“Exactly,” said Brooke. “All in real time. Like a chat room.”

“Only nobody’s
chatting
,” said Nick. “ ’Cause it’s a
library
.”

Will looked at Elise’s tablet. Brooke was gone from her screen as well. And Elise was staring out at Will with the same cocky, sardonic smile the
real
Elise usually wore.

“So if I take that tutorial—” said Will.

“Your tablet will create your own syn-app,” said Brooke.

“And people used to think photographs stole your soul,” said Will, shaking his head.

“Nya-ah-ah,” said Nick.

Elise sighed. “It’s just a graphic stand-in for an intuitive user interface.”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Nick. “Check
that
at the door, ’cause let me tell you what: having your own little dude is freaking
massive
.”

“How do they make it look so much like you?” asked Will.

“Sophisticated character-based three-D modeling,” said Elise. “Rendered from your appearance and behavior. The software learns from observing you.”

“To be more
like
you,” said Nick. “How shwhacked is
that
?” Nick turned his tablet around. Nick’s character was walking around the table on his hands, making goofy faces. Nick got up and walked around the table on
his
hands.

“Yep,” said Will. “That’s you, all right.”

Back at work, Elise was examining the insignia on the letterhead above the names with a magnifying glass. “These might be weapons around the edge of the bouquet,” she said. “Or maybe tools.”

Ajay hurried out of his bedroom to join them, carrying his tablet. “Good news. I’ve collated the GPS data I grabbed from the tunnels. Now let’s lay it over a grid of the campus and see what we find.”

Ajay set his tablet on the table. Will snuck a look at it and saw the syn-app version of Ajay moving images around on-screen. Ajay’s double appeared even more elfin than he did, almost like an anime character, with enormous brown eyes.

“Okay, that’s just freaky,” said Will.

“Good gravy, man, haven’t you taken the tutorial?” asked Ajay.

“Not sure I want to,” said Will. “Not after seeing this.”

“I’ve got it. They’re weapons
and
tools,” said Elise, studying the insignia through the magnifying glass. “The two on top are a sword and a hatchet—”

“Hello,” said Nick. “Just like
Paladin
dude.”

“And the two on the bottom are a builder’s square … and a compass.…”

“A
compass
,” said Nick. “That could be a clue. What direction is it pointing?”

“Not a navigational compass, a
drafting
compass. The kind architects and draftsmen use to draw circles,” said Elise, showing them her screen.

“All four objects could also be something else,” said Brooke, scrutinizing the insignia on her screen. “I think they might be letters.”

“What kind of letters?” asked Nick, trying to drink coffee while balancing upside down on one hand.

“Calligraphy of some kind,” said Brooke. “From an archaic alphabet.”

“Let’s check it out,” said Elise. She held the Peers list in front of her screen. Elise stood up from the table on-screen to study the page, then reached to the top of the screen and brought down an
exact copy
of the list.

“Okay, what the heck just happened?” asked Will.

“The tablet used its camera to scan the letter, rendered a virtual copy, and delivered it into the simulation,” said Elise. “So my syn-app could go find a match.”

Elise on-screen looked up at Will and said, “Pretty spooky, huh?”

Will fell over backward on his chair. “It talked!”

“Boo-yah,” said Nick.

“They all can,” said Brooke. “Once they get to know you.”

“Oh, they can do a lot more than
talk
,” said Nick, helping Will up while still walking on his hands. “If you know what I’m saying, wink, wink.”

“There’s a difference,” said Elise, “between using a tool and
being
a tool.”

“Touché, my lady,” said Nick, flipping back to his feet and giving a small bow.

Elise rolled her eyes, then spoke to her syn-app. “Library.”

The environment on-screen around Elise shifted to the same academic library. Elise started toward the stacks, and on the way passed Brooke, coming back with a large open book. The syn-apps waved to each other.

Will peeked over Brooke’s shoulder at her screen as her character ported back to the pod. She looked at them, held up a book about flowers, and moved close to the screen. Brooke read the entry her double had found: “The white mum is the city flower of Chicago … and the flower of the month of November.…”

“Step back now,” said Nick, snapping his fingers. “Dudes, we’re not that far from Chicago … and … it’s
November right now
.”

“Take a deep breath,” said Ajay slowly. “And try to prevent your mind from working altogether.”

“The white mum is also the emblem of a mysterious organization called the Fraternity of the Triangle,” said Brooke, still reading. “A secret society of scientists, architects, and engineers. Its origins reach back to the Middle Ages … and they’re aligned with the Freemasons.”

“Now you’re on to something,” said Ajay, excited. “The compass and builder’s square, which you found in this insignia, are both Masonic symbols.”

“Freemasons?” asked Nick. “Is that a fraternity, too?”

“Neither is a ‘fraternity,’ Nick,” said Brooke wearily. “At least not the kind you’re thinking of.”

“And what kind might that be?” asked Nick.

“College pledges, Greek Week,” said Brooke.