att(pirated)

"Christine, what the hell are we doing?" I hissed as I was pulled through the dark hallways of the Henry mansion. But Christine simply ignored my question, and I was forced to look back on how my relationship with the French girl had changed over the past couple of months.

It had started just after me and Anders had found Christine's note in the sundial. I'd approached her and told her about the half of the key that she'd found, before showing her my half of it the next day. Unfortunately, while she was happy that I'd found it, that happiness turned to sadness when I told her that I'd had it for months and not told anyone about it. And while she'd agreed to help me search for whatever door or box the keys unlocked, it was obvious that our relationship had taken a downward turn. I'd tried to find out more about it via Valerie and Anders, but when they came up with nothing, I was left to speculate on it. The only answer that came to mind was that she felt that I didn't trust her, and in turn felt that I didn't consider her as a friend. That would be a bit hypocritical, as she also hadn't told us about her discovery or the fact that she could apparently pick locks too. But children were always liable to be hypocritical, and I didn't hold that against her. I only wished that she'd extend the same courtesy to me. Rather than acting as if I'd gone out of my way to insult her.

Either way, our continued efforts to try and find where the keys went hadn't bore fruit for months. It took so long that I managed to visit Alexia twice in that time period. And after returning back from that second outing to Paris, I hadn't expected anything to happen tonight. So you can imagine my surprise when I'd been woken up at god knows what time after lights out by someone jimmying the lock on my bedroom's door. Acting on instinct, I grabbed the closest pointy object to defend myself, only for the French girl to slip through the door, and to practically drag me out of my nice and comfy bed. She told me to grab my half of the key, and dragged me out of the room as soon as I retrieved it from the cubby-hole that I'd previously stored it in.

I wasn't too happy at how apparently multiple people knew how to pick locks, and had kept me in the dark about it. But given how I was currently doing my best to not trip down the darkened stairs, I figured that now probably wasn't the time to complain about it.

"Chris. What's going on?" I pressed my friend again as we finally reached the massive balcony that overlooked the main hall. The ostentatious room was only illuminated by the moonlight that seeped in through the large second floor windows. I didn't know what phase of the moon we were in, but there was enough moonlight flooding into the room that I could make out the details of the room.

"I think I found where our keys are meant to go. But you need to trust me, ok?" Christine whispered back at me, her voice low but still packed with excitement. She must have found some clue earlier today, and had decided that waiting on it was out of the question. That, or she figured that now was the best time to go snooping.

For a second, I considered saying no. I could have argued that this didn't need to happen in the middle of the night, when I'd rather be sleeping. But trust was an issue between us, and given how I was relying on my friends group to ensure that I wasn't sent off with the next psychopath to walk through the gate, I needed that relationship to be as strong as possible. So in the end, I had no choice but to trust her. "Ok, but that still doesn't tell me why you woke me up well after lights out."

"You'll see! Just stop trying to get us caught, ok?" Christine hissed back at me, before leading me down one of the legs of the H-shaped mezzanine. After a few seconds, she grabbed my hand, and held it up against one of the banisters. After a few seconds of fiddling, my index finger eventually found and partially depressed a button built into the wood.

Satisfied, Christine let go of me, and took a step back as she spoke. "Ok, stay here. There's another button on the other side. I'm going to go over there, and we'll press the button at the same time."

"How are we going to time it properly in the dark?" I asked, deferring the decision to her. She'd already taken the lead so far. And it'd improve her view of things if I let her take charge for a change. If nothing else, it'd be nice to not be the one making the decisions all the time.

"There should be enough light for you to see me, but if not then you'll hear me. Just keep your voice down and we'll be fine. This isn't my first time out here, you know?" Christine explained with a confident tone in her voice, and a relaxed pose. I couldn't make out her facial expressions in the dark, but I gathered that she was comfortable enough with the situation. Which only made it more believable that she'd been sneaking out at night without telling anyone.

"No. You didn't tell me." I grumbled, catching a brief change in her expression that I couldn't fully identify in the darkness. I panicked a bit at the prospect that I might have hit a nerve, before moving on to the main point. "How will we know that it's worked?"

"If it works then the button will go in and it won't come back out again. When that happens, meet me at the middle bit of the stairs." Christine explained, her voice noticeably deflated, and a bit dejected. Before I could ask any further questions, or apologize for potentially hurting her feelings, she turned and quickly crept away.

Yeah, I'd hit a nerve, that'd make my job of fixing our relationship a whole lot more difficult.

God, this was going to be annoying. At least with Alexia, I could probably have kept a secret like this and not had to worry about her taking it so badly. At least I hoped so. If not, then things would get awkward pretty quickly if she realized that I'd been sent to her for a purpose.

"Tanya. Tanya." My thoughts were brought back to the present by a distant whisper. Christine had made it over to the other side of the mezenne, and was probably ready to press her button.

"Yes! I hear you!" I replied, doing my level best to match the other girl's tone, while ensuring that my voice carried across the gap across the main hall.

"Shush! You're too loud!" Christine hissed at me from the other side of the room, before getting down to business. "Press your button on three. One… Two… Three!"

I pressed the button just after she said the word three, not as she said it, completely guessing that she wasn't expecting me to perfectly match her timing. Thankfully, either I was right or the control system on these buttons wasn't too picky about timings. As the button silently buried itself a few millimeters deeper into the banister, and didn't come out when I took my finger off it. With that, I followed Christine's instructions, and made my way over to the top of the mezenne, and halfway down the regal stairs at the back of the main hall, stopping at the landing where the two halves of the staircase met. Only a few seconds later, Christine joined me, and I let her lead me down the stairs, and towards the back of the house.

Christine led me through a door and into an adjacent corridor, before pulling me into a small reading nook, and tucking us behind the half-wall that separated it from the rest of the corridor at the sound of a door opening in front of us. We knelt there for almost a minute as two people walked by, idly chatting to each other as they did whatever jobs they were doing in the middle of the night. We waited for them to go through another doorway, before quickly making our way through the corridor, and over to a door into the mansion's massive garden.

This early in the year, the spring night was still remarkably chilly. Especially for people in pajamas, and who hadn't stopped to put on shoes. But apparently Christine didn't want to take the risk to go and retrieve our shoes, which made our slow and careful creep through the garden even more uncomfortable than it should have been. And the fact that it was wet outside made it even more uncomfortable, especially for the few occasions where we needed to get on our hands and knees and crawl along the low hedges to avoid the guards. Guards who, from the looks of it, were absolutely terrible at their jobs, I mean seriously. If Lord Henry had sent any of them for extra training after Jonah's escape attempt, then it had been for nothing. The only way we could have humiliated them any further would have been to sneak around with cardboard boxes for cover.

Thankfully, we reached our destination before any of them could get wise. A pile of wooden planks along the exterior wall of the mansion with a tarp haphazardly laid across it. I'd never seen anyone interact with them, and had written off as nothing more than junk after a few weeks. But there must have been something more important about them as Christine quickly gestured for me to join her at the front of the pile. I shimmied over beside her as she frantically ran a hand over the wood. A few nerve wracking second later, she pointed to a pair of pegs on the planks on the second rows from the sides of the pile. "These pegs here should match the slots on the top of your key. Put your key on there, and I'll do the same on the other side. We'll pull them down at the same time."

I said nothing, and pulled my key out of my quickly stuck it on the indicated pegs. And just as Christine had predicted, the two slots milled into the key's shaft lined up perfectly with the seemingly random pegs. I looked over in time to see Christine do the same thing with her key, before pulling the key down. At first, nothing happened. But when Christine did the same thing on her side, the entire front face of the 'pile of wood' dropped down into a void underneath it. I had to quickly pull my key free so that the fake wood cover could drop all the way into the ground, before holding the cover in place as some return mechanism tried to push it back up. The space inside the fake pile of wood was cramped and almost completely pitch-black, but I could make out the top of a ladder. Which indicated that wherever the hole went, jumping down would probably have been a bad idea.

So it was a good thing that I stuck out my arm, and stopped Christine from doing exactly that. This time I could see her reaction in the moonlight, and the mix of confusion and unhappiness that battled for control of her expression. It was a look that asked 'what are you doing?' and 'are you trying to get us caught?' at the same time. But it was also one that disappeared when I pointed to the top of the ladder, and gestured for her to use it. She nodded at me, before twisting herself around, and lowering herself into the space. She kept her upper body safely on the ground while her legs found the rungs of the ladder, before shimmying in and down as she progressed down, rung by rung.

I wanted for her to drop out of sight, before repeating her actions. I dropped to the ground, swung my legs into the void, found the ladder rungs, and pulled myself in as I carefully descended the ladder. I kept one arm holding the fake cover down as I slipped in, before releasing as soon as my head was clear. The cover slowly rose on a well-oiled return mechanism, strangling what little light we had, before finally snuffing it out as it slid back into place and locked with a light click.

"Hey! I can't see!" Christine squeaked from just below me, her voice now at it's normal volume, and laced with fear.

"We can't leave it open, someone will see it. Or do you want me to try and get us caught?" I returned as I made my way down the ladder. I had meant to be a bit snarky with the French girl, but I hadn't intended to come off too harshly. Though given how I was cold, wet, and having to fight to hold onto the slick metal ladder, a bit of heat may have slipped in. Thankfully, the ladder wasn't too tall, maybe about the height of a room, and before long we made our way to the bottom.

And into… some sort of room. Without any source of light, be it natural or artificial, neither of us could see anything an inch beyond our faces. We were completely blind, and that must have had an effect on Christine, because as soon as she found me, she held my hand with an iron grip. I said nothing, both to avoid highlighting it and so that I could listen out for any ambient noise in the room, but I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. It was all too easy to forget that, at the end of the day, all of the children here were just that, children. And that a healthy fear of the dark was still something that held a lot of sway over them.

But when that came up with nothing, I settled for the only other practical sense I had left to navigate with. Touch.

"Come on. Just stick close to me, ok?" I said to Christine as I felt the wall around the ladder with my free hand. I found the corner within seconds, and followed the next wall along. I took things slowly and carefully, as I couldn't see the ground, and I couldn't be sure about what I was walking into. That proved to be a smart choice, as after maybe a couple of meters or so, the landing transitioned into a set of stairs.

I figured that out when I went to take another step, and my foot found nothing but air for a few heartstopping seconds. Thankfully, Christine felt my grip on her hand get a lot tighter for a second, and pulled me back before I lost my balance. It took a few seconds to regian my balance, but once I did I made sure to thank the French girl for her efforts. "Thanks, Chris. There's going to be a set of stairs just in front of you, I'll lead you onto them, OK?"

"Don't call me Chris." Christine muttered as I made my way down the first few steps. She didn't like the fact that people often shortened her name to the more boyish 'Chris,' but aside from that bit of grumbling, she let me lead her onto the staircase. And together, we made our way into the darkness. The stairs were old and cold, but they were made out of stone from how they felt underfoot, and they were very level. So aside from the fact that every step was a step into the pitch black, the descent down was relatively smooth sailing. Still, I was thankful that we were done after maybe a floor or so before the steps leveled off into another floor. From there, we made our way along for another ten meters or so, before we reached the end of the corridor.

"There's a wall in front of us." I announced as I felt the corner of the wall that I'd been using as a guide ever since the ladder. I reached from one side of the corner to the other, only to stop as the rough concrete gave way to comparatively smoother metal. I paused for a second, before lightly rapping my knuckle against the metal, and listening to the noise it produced. It sounded hollow, and I wasted no time in telling Christine my finsdings. "The thing in front of us is made of metal. And it sounds hollow. It might be a door."

"Really? Let's find a handle or something." Christine said with a bit of force in her words, before stepping closer to the metal sheet and starting to trace it with her free hand. I had to give her credit for being brave in the situation, though the fact that one of my hands was getting a bit sore was a testament to her true feelings. Still, if she did let her fear drive her, then it was for the best, as she found what she was looking for within only a few seconds. "Found it! There's a handle on my side, but it's stuck. I think there's a keyhole, though it's too tall for my key. I think we might need to combine our keys to open it."

"Ok, can you pass me your key? I'll put them together while you keep a hand on the handle." I asked, and I was a bit surprised at how quickly Christine wrenched her hand free of mine in order to get her half of the key, and to shove it in against my chest. I took the hind, and quickly combined the two sections to make the complete key. I didn't know what it looked like, but the fact that it had been designed to use a simple slot-and-peg system to fit them together meant that putting it together required about as much skill as building something with Lego. As soon as the two parts were together again, I handed the key back to Christine, who wasted no time in shoving the key in, undoing the lock…

…and then bouncing against the door as it refused to budge.

"It's stuck!" Christine wailed, the despair evident in her voice, though I couldn't tell if that was because she'd potentially lost her only way out of the darkness, or if it was because our path to unlocking the secrets of the mansion was blocked.

"Hey, hey. Relax. We'll just need to give it a bit of encouragement, right?" I consoled Christine as I settled on the only option we had left. Namely, hitting the door with all of the brute force that a seven-year-old and an eight-year-old could manage. It wasn't a lot, but we didn't have much else to go off. So I counted us in. "On three, shove the door as hard as you can with your shoulder. Ok, on three. One… Two… Three!"

On three, we both shoved the door. And to our credit, it did budge a little bit. But only by a couple of centimeters. Something was jamming the door, and it wasn't a weight on the other side. So either the door frame had deformed, or whatever seal was between the door and the doorframe had bulged and was acting as an improvised doorstop. But whatever it was, it couldn't stand up to repeated shoves and slams. It took us a while, and two sore shoulders, but eventually, we managed to force the door open enough that we could slip through the gap.

Naturally, Christine was the first through, as she was closest to the gap. But not for the reasons I thought, as she narrated what she was doing. "If this was a door, then there should be a lightswitch on the wall somewhere around here. Let me just have a look…"

I shook my head at her little excuse, and followed her through the gap in the doorway as she started her search. I was more than ready to point out that the chances of there being a working lightswitch were incredibly small, given how the corridor we'd just been in had been as cold and as dark as a grave. But the argument was blasted out of my mouth by a sudden burst of light. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Christine had found the lightswitch, and that they were still working. And I cursed to myself as I scrunched my eyes shut, and covered one of them with my hand to try and preserve my night vision in it.

"Woah! What is this?" Christine asked with a sense of childlike wonder, her previous fears gone and her energy returned in full at whatever had been revealed to her. It took me a few seconds of blinking, but eventually one of my eyes was able to adjust to the sudden light, and I found myself staring into a small room with benches and lockers on either side, and a heavy duty door on the other side. The whole room made me feel uncomfortable, it looked like one hell of an airlock.

No… it was an airlock. The outer door had been replaced, but the inner door was the kind of multi-point bulkhead door that I expected to find deep within the bowels of a ship. The kind that were designed to withstand fire and gas, and to keep the people on the other side safe.

"Hey, maybe we should-" I began, only for Christine to yank me into the room.

"Come on, Tanya! Let's get that other door open!" Christine eagerly pulled me into the airlock, pulling on the arm that I was using to cover my night-optimized eye, and dragged me over to the other door, completely ignoring the fact that the outer door swung cleanly closed as soon as we were no longer pushing on it. The outer door sealed with a loud click, but Christine paid it no mind, just as how she paid no mind to the fact that this bunker shouldn't have had power. Instead, she dragged me over to the door with one arm, and with the other she started to turn the massive circular handle in the middle of the door.

"Christine, stop, I don't think that we should be doing this." I said with a bit of forced concern. Of course, there was some very real fear in there, this whole place gave me the creeps. But if Christine noticed, she didn't care to stop. She was hooked on the warm and fuzzy high of discovery, and she quickly shoved the bulkhead door open. Revealing a well preserved entrance room, one that sort of resembled a mix between a lounge and the staff room in the mansion. Complete with a little piano, a bar, and various places to sit and relax. Just beyond it was a corridor of some kind, with various rooms inside.

"Is this a secret base? This is so cool! Anders and Val and Jonah are gonna be so jealous!" My French friend practically bounced on her heels at the discovery, completely missing the fact that I was experiencing almost the exact opposite feelings to her. Where she felt elation and excitement at finding the bunker, I felt nothing but misery and apprehension at the fact that my list of spy-novel tropes was turning into a checklist.

Secret keys

Lockboxes and trapdoors in plain sight

Hidden rooms or a base

We were three out-of-five on our counter for 'things out of a stereotypical spy saga' and I really wasn't keen on sticking around to find out if the other two points on the list held true. But I didn't even need to look at Christine to know that she would want to explore this bunker from end-to-end. She'd want to investigate every room, every shelf, every nook and cranny. And getting her out of here would be a massive pain in the backside. No matter what we found here, how long it would take.

I couldn't stop myself from groaning at that prospect. Tonight was going to be a long night.