“Dude … how can you possibly remember all that random stuff?”
Ajay glanced nervously at Will. “Well, I do study a great deal, and I take copious notes, and I guess I have above-average retention—”
“Okay, scoreboard,” said Nick, who triumphantly held up his list of words and pointed to the last one. “Check it out.”
“Tock,” said Brooke. “That’s the best you could do.”
“Tock could mean something,” said Nick.
“Yes. If you were a clock,” said Ajay.
“At least a clock can tell time,” said Elise, scowling.
Nick looked discouraged, but his on-screen counterpart held up to the screen the page he had written, whistled, and waved his arms excitedly to catch Nick’s eye.
“Hold on, hold on,” said Nick. He then tried to pronounce the variations on his syn-app’s page. “Ktoc, cokt, ockt … crap, I sound like a cat with a hairball—”
Nick started choking on-screen, like a cat.
“Amazing,” said Ajay, shaking his head. “Even his cartoon is a moron.”
“Somewhere,” said Elise, drumming her fingers on the table, “there’s a tiny little village that’s missing its idiot.”
“Screw it, where’d we stash the Scrabble set?” Nick got up and rifled through the kitchen. He returned with a bag of letter tiles, fishing out the four he needed.
“Have a look at this,” said Ajay as he laid his tablet on the table. A three-dimensional view of the campus appeared in midair, floating above his screen. Ajay used his hands to expand the image until it covered most of the table.
“Now let’s track the coordinates I entered.…” Using his fingers to scroll the image, Ajay moved their point of view until it hovered over the field house. The building turned transparent, revealing a detailed re-creation of the men’s locker room. “We entered the tunnel from the locker room … went down these stairs, turned hard left … and followed the hall to here.…”
He moved his finger down a long straightaway, outlining the path of the tunnel, until he reached another blinking point at the end.
“The door to the auxiliary locker room,” said Ajay. “Exactly one-quarter of a mile under the athletic fields.” He touched his screen again; the smaller locker room appeared, and inside it another doorway. “We entered the second tunnel here behind the lockers. Now watch.”
Their point of view rose back into a bird’s-eye view as he tracked the tunnel to the east. “By the time we moved through that large chamber and reached the T-intersection, we were over two hundred feet underground.”
Two corridors branched off at ninety degrees. The one to the right ran directly under the photo-real waters of Lake Waukoma.
“We followed the right fork to here,” said Ajay. The blinking spot moved under the lake to the island and came to a stop at the hatch behind the Crag.
“The Crag was built in the early 1870s,” said Ajay. “It’s my opinion that these tunnels were built at the same time. A rough geologic network of caves probably existed here already.”
“Like the ones on the bluff across the lake,” said Will.
“Correct,” said Ajay, “but it took enormous effort to extend and finish them, as we saw. The required resources would have been on hand when the castle was being built, and I believe only a person rich and eccentric enough to create such a folly in the first place could have built those tunnels. Therefore, I think whoever put up the Crag also created these tunnels. Over fifty years before the Center was built.”
“So who built the Crag?” asked Will.
“I’ll find out,” said Brooke. “But why were the tunnels built in the first place?”
“We can’t answer that yet,” said Will.
“Do you think the people who chased you from the castle have something to do with the Peers?” asked Elise, looking concerned.
“I’m not sure,” said Will. “We know the guy who owns it now, Haxley, keeps heavy security on the island. Maybe they were just guards reacting to the presence of intruders.”
“Will, they were practically waiting for us when we came up that ladder,” said Ajay.
“And that tunnel leads directly to the Peers’ meeting room,” said Elise. “There must be some connection.”
“I think she’s right, Will,” said Ajay.
“Then let’s keep looking for that,” said Will.
“Okay, all that’s awesome and totally sick,” said Nick, obsessing over the Scrabble tiles. “But these four frickin’ letters still don’t spell frickin’ anything.”
“That’s because they’re not an anagram,” said Brooke, excited, staring intently at her screen. “They’re an acronym.”
“You mean something that means the opposite of something?” asked Nick.
“No, that’s an antonym,” said Brooke. “An acronym means they’re the first letters of words or a phrase that mean something.” She rearranged Nick’s tiles to their original order. “T … K … O … C.”
“You mean like LOL?” asked Nick skeptically.
“Yes,” said Brooke. “Like an acronym.”
“LQTM,” said Nick.
“What’s that mean?” asked Ajay.
“Laughing quietly to myself,” said Nick.
“So what’s the phrase for TKOC?” asked Will.
Brooke turned her tablet around. Her syn-app opened another leather-bound book from the library and held it to the screen. They were looking at a lavish two-page color illustration, a heroic painting of twelve heavily armored knights on horseback.
“The Knights of Charlemagne,” said Brooke. “The twelve greatest warriors who served under Emperor Charlemagne. They called themselves the Peers, and every name on that list you found is here: Orlando, Renaldo, Namo—”
The others crowded around her to take a look.
“—Salomon, Turpin, Astolpho, Ogier, Malagigi, Padraig, Florismart, Ganelon, Guerin de Montglave—”
“Dude,” said Nick. “My head’s about to asplode.”
“That’s why the Peers used Frankish letters for this acronym,” said Ajay. “A hidden clue to their origin and identity, concealed in the insignia.”
“The first twelve names are here,” said Elise, scanning the list from the book. “But not the last one: the Old Gentleman.”
“So who is he, then?” asked Will.
“I have an idea about that,” said Brooke, paging through her online book. “Give me a second.”
“Let’s put this together,” said Will, pacing as he thought it through. “The locker room and those tunnels are being used by members of a group called the Knights of Charlemagne. A modern incarnation of an ancient order that may have some connection to the person who built that castle.”
“Or the person who lives there today,” said Elise.
“And the Knights are definitely connected to the Black Caps who came after me,” said Will.
“Maybe they’re all part of the same organization,” said Ajay.
“Maybe,” said Will.
“So what do we freakin’ do about it?” asked Nick, pacing opposite Will.
“Our mission hasn’t changed,” Ajay said. “We have to find out who the Peers are. Who did Will see down there with the hats and masks? Who chased us through the tunnels tonight?”
“We know who one of them is,” said Elise.
“Lyle,” said Will. “We’ll start with him.”
Brooke gasped and stood up abruptly, holding her tablet.
“Listen to this,” she said, alarmed.
“Don’t scare me like that,” said Nick.
Brook urgently read another passage from her syn-app’s book: “Charlemagne’s twelve knights accompanied him on two different crusades when the emperor led his army across Europe to capture Jerusalem and the Holy Land for the ‘civilized’ western kingdoms.”