TIME & TIED: DESTRUCTION

ARC 3.2 - With The Group

PART 54b: THE MANSION 2

Julie decided she was in a laboratory. Abandoned, to be sure, but it contained cabinets, counters, a sink - and fluorescent lighting overhead, which was still switched off. She fumbled her way across the room, towards the only door, where she found the main light switch.

“Where in heck did all this come from?" Julie murmured, once she was in a position to do a full scan of the room. “How is this room inside my house?"

She had thoroughly explored the mansion after moving in. True, the basement floor plan allowed for a room of this size, but the only place it could have been was behind a completely walled off area. Walled off...

Julie walked back over to the alcove, and looked up. It seemed that she had landed at the bottom of some sort of overhead chute. Pursing her lips, Julie did some mental calculations, and realized this laboratory could indeed be part of her basement. With access from above.

She made a quick circuit of the room, noting that there were still a handful of instruments in the drawers as well as chemicals in the cabinets. If it weren’t for the dust, implying the room hadn’t been used in years, she might have thought that someone was in the mansion spying on her.

A flash of red caught her attention as she looked more closely at a large safe. Something had been shoved into the narrow space in between said safe, and the adjoining counter. Grabbing a nearby metre stick and fishing in the opening produced a spiral notebook. Julie blew the dust off of it, scanning over the cover.

"Observations and experiments," she read. "As recorded by Professor Linquist... Professor Linquist?" Julie looked up. “Of course. He owned this place before we moved in. This lab must have been some secret work area of his!"

The brunette began to riffle through the book, but it seemed to be written in some sort of scientific code.

"The others need to see this," Julie decided. "Heck, they're probably wondering what's happened to me. So how do I get out of here?"

She tried the door, finding it to be unlocked. It opened inwards, revealing a wall of concrete blocks - except there was a narrow passage there, which could fit a single person. The passage extended in both directions.

“Left or right?” Julie whispered. She peered into the darkness. No way to know. “Right. Let's see where this goes."

***

“Okay, well, I don’t think she’s up here,” Carrie concluded. “Unless she’s in that locked records room, or Jeeves’ room, or is actively being moved around to avoid us or something.”

“We can still try those rooms before giving up,” Clarke insisted.

Carrie shook her head. “At this point, if people were stealing Julie through time, I think they’d be gone. There has to be another reason for...“ She froze. “Damn. Oh, DAMN!”

"What?"

Carrie took off towards the stairway. "We're up here. Frank and Luci are in the basement. I left the time machine on the main level, UNGUARDED. What if that was the plan? What if it was JULIE’S plan? To hide, and throw us off long enough to take a time trip?”

Clarke frowned. “Carrie, she’s not that reckless, and surely Frank still has the coins..."

However, the blonde girl was already out of earshot. So, with a resigned sigh, Clarke followed her back down.

He reentered the sitting room to see her staring down at the time machine, on the floor, exactly where they had left it. "See? You need to give Julie more credit."

“Okay. But it’s SO stupid of me to keep leaving the damn thing where others can get it,” she said, grimacing. “I mean, this is twice in two days. Um, kinda. Look, I think I’d better take it back to my place. I'll sleep better knowing that it's still under my bed."

"Fine," Clarke granted. “Now can we get back to searching? Because I swear, Julie wouldn't have run off like this voluntarily.”

“Scratch the basement," Frank offered, as he and Luci reentered the room behind him. "But there were a couple of locked areas. Storage, maybe?”

“I also wonder if we missed a section - there seemed to be less floor space than I would have expected," Luci observed.

"No, it’s fine, there’s a section around the back of the stairs which is all foundation,” Clarke assured. “There's no rooms in that area.”

As he spoke, there came a click and a series of creaks. Then the tall china cabinet against one wall of the room began to rattle as it slid sideways across the carpet. Clarke lifted his eyebrows, as Carrie grabbed for the time machine and Frank stepped slightly in front of Luci.

Everyone watched as Julie emerged from a dark passage, her clothes dusty, with cobwebs caught in her hair. "Actually," Julie said, letting out a cough. "It would seem that there is a room down there after all."

"Jewels,” Clarke gasped, running towards her, stopping short from actually grasping her by the shoulders. "What happened?"

Julie turned to look at the tunnel behind her. "My best guess," she ventured, "is that I triggered something by twisting the towel ring in the bathroom while the medicine cabinet was open. It sent me down to this lab where... well, Phil, why don't you go grab a flashlight so that we can all see for ourselves?"

***

"Careful, there's some stairs here," Julie warned. There was only enough space for them to move single file, so she led the way. Clarke brought up the rear, shining his light forwards.

"I'll be damned," Carrie muttered, inching along behind Julie. It was extra awkward, because she hadn’t wanted to leave the time machine behind again - but now she had to walk sideways, with it at her hip. “Like everyone else, I’d heard the rumours about there being secret passages in this place. But I thought you'd searched for them."

“Seems I wasn’t thorough enough," Julie admitted. “In the end, most of my searching was done downstairs, around that closed off section. So while I'm sure that there's no way into it from down there, it didn't occur to me to check for access from places on the main landing.”

"A china cabinet isn't the most obvious choice for a passage anyway," Frank commented. "I'd have gone for a bookshelf."

"Well, we keep china in it, I'm not sure what Linquist used it for.”

“Linquist?” came Luci’s voice. “You think that quack was doing illegal experiments down here??”

“I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me. He left some logbook of experiments behind.” Less than a minute later, they had all filed into the hidden basement room.

“You know what?” Carrie said, looking around. "This would be an excellent place for us to use for storage, time travel meetings, that kind of thing. It’s in the mansion, out of the way - even Jeeves doesn't know about it, right?"

“Right,” Julie confirmed. “I can also tidy it up a little for us, and catalog whatever stuff Linquist left behind.”

"Hold it,” Luci objected. "Have you forgotten how crazy that guy was? What if he left booby traps behind?"

“He wasn’t always crazy,” Carrie countered. “And I doubt he would have sold this place to a wealthy family like the LaMilles if he'd left anything in here that would take their heads off. That would mean a major lawsuit."

“Even when he wasn’t crazy, he still wasn’t normal,” Luci shot back. “Remember, Linquist believed that aliens left their children at orphanages in the hopes that they would some day be brought inconspicuously into society. A familiar story for you, right Carrie?"

"My mother was an unwitting time traveler, not an alien," Carrie said dismissively. “And Linquist had nothing to do with her appearance or disappearance, they happened years before he went off on this tangent.”

“Yet people in the future must have associated with Linquist at SOME point,” Luci countered. “Remember, this guy also also owned equipment for sensing the temporal flux in my DNA. He couldn't have picked that up at the corner drugstore.”

“Ugh. Point,” Carrie finally yielded. “We should be careful.”

“On the topic of using this place though,” Frank broke in. “It’s not a bad idea."

“And I've decided to clean the lab up no matter what," Julie put in.

“In which case, I can make sure to be around whenever Julie's investigating," Clarke offered.

Luci let out a sigh. "Oh, very well. But don't say I didn't warn you.” She held up Linquist’s red notebook. “Can I keep this, at least? To see if I can figure out what this guy spent his time experimenting on down here? I’m sure there’s some connection between that guy and time travel that we’ve missed.”

"No problem," Julie agreed. “It’s in code though.”

“I can help you work on it, if you want," Frank offered. Luci smiled back at him.

"Then it's settled," Clarke concluded. "Me and Julie will fix this place up over the week, so you could bring coins and technical drawings or whatever down here by, say, this Friday evening.”

“Except that’s the night of the school dance," Frank reminded the taller boy. "Aren't you going to be there with Julie?”

Clarke looked sidelong at the brunette. "Well, no. Unless she changes her mind..."

"Oh, Julie, you should come,” Carrie said. “The first dance of the school year? It's a way to get you back into social circles.”

Julie shook her head. "On the contrary, my presence would only serve to remind people of what happened between me and Corry at the first dance LAST year. When I not only screwed you and him over, but Laurie Veniti too.”

“No way - or if it does remind them, it’ll only serve to show them how much better of a person you are now," Carrie insisted. "Come on, you really have been keeping a lot to yourself lately. A dance will do you good. The four of us will stand up for you. I'll make sure Glen does as well.”

"Glen? You think he’ll be there?" Frank asked.

Carrie pursed her lips. “Yeah. Since he, uh, kinda asked me out - more specifically, ask me to honour him by being his date - and after our cafe meeting became a fiasco the other week, I didn't really want to say no." She shrugged.

"Carrie's right, Julie, you might as well come along," Luci chimed in. “If you feel uncomfortable, you can always leave early."

Julie looked around at them. "But..." Her eyes landed on Clarke. “Oh, all right. Phil, we'll go. If nothing else, we can see Corry’s music group in their first major performance. They’re supposed to be performing when the DJ goes on break.”

“That’s great,” Clarke said, smiling back. “See Jewels? I told you some people would want you there. You blew things out of proportion. I mean, you and Corry aren't actively fighting any more, so what's the worst thing that could possibly happen?"

As it turned out, Clarke was surprised.