Rogue Read Free Page A

dominant species. Which he in turn interpreted”—he paused and chuckled as he turned to Will with a twinkle in his eye—“as evidence of their desire to take over the world a second time.”
    “So that’s what the second word on the door is about, then,” said Will. “You know what that one means, right?”
    “Teotwawki. Oh, yes, an acronym:
the end of the world as we know it
. More ravings, but sadly, so it proved to be for Ian. At that point, he had been confined for some months to a padded room here at the Crag, judged a danger to himself. Then he escaped one day and fled down into the tunnels. That’s when he carved those letters on the doors with a knife he stole from the kitchen. And then Ian used that same knife to take his own life.”
    Will paused for a moment. He’d stood in that exact spot, not so long ago. He closed his eyes, sent himself back there, and for a moment touched the overwhelming aura of the poor man’s terror and desperation. He shuddered as it ran through him; then he quickly shook it off.
    “What about the statues of the soldiers in the tunnel? Did Ian put those there, too?”
    “Yes, another folly of Ian’s that Lemuel tolerated enough to indulge, even after his father was gone—one soldier for every American war. Sentinels, Ian called them, standing guard against what he feared might one day emerge from down below. I hope you can see by now that poor Ian had some exceedingly strange ideas about
what
he’d found. But he’d also grown far too unstable to come close to realizing exactly
who
he’d found.”
    “But Lemuel did.”
    “Oh, yes. And he was also perceptive enough to realize that in order to make the most of it, the Knights would need the help of someone in our family going forward. An ally from the next generation who would appreciate the magnitude, dare I say the magnificence, of what all this could lead to.” Franklin glanced over and smiled at Will again. “That’s why he came to me.”
    “But you were just a student here then, weren’t you?” asked Will, confused.
    “I was twelve,” said Franklin.
    He stopped before a set of double doors and took out the porcelain key.
    “But you see, I was very much like you, Will. I’d discovered the tunnels during my own explorations when I was still in short pants. A boy needs his adventures, doesn’t he?”
    “I guess so, sir.”
    “And not unlike Ian Cornish, I found that something down in those caverns spoke to me as well. Not a voice, per se, but a feeling, an emanation that radiated intelligence, mystery, and the promise of something titanic. It was irresistible to my imagination. So I kept venturing back down below, a little deeper each time, until I finally made it to the doors. And that day, as I emerged from the tunnels, I found Lemuel waiting for me.”
    “Was he angry at you?”
    Franklin chuckled. “He tried to make me think so. But after we spoke for a while, he sensed we were kindred spirits. My curiosity was handsomely rewarded. Lemuel began taking me along with him on his trips down below—beyond the doors—showing me, a section at a time, the enormity of what they’d found.”
    “You never told your father about this?”
    “It was a secret only Lemuel and I shared,” said Franklin, raising his eyebrows mischievously. “Just as all this will be ours.”
    He inserted the key into a large rectangular keyhole and turned it. Will heard the lock yield, and Franklin softly pushed the doors open.
    A dimly lit carpeted room waited inside. Sleek, spare furnishings, a few expensive-looking works of modern art on the wall. Two leather wing-backed chairs.
    Someone was sitting in one of the chairs, turned away from the door; Will saw a thick-soled, old-fashioned black shoe splayed out to the side on the floor but couldn’t see the person’s face.
    “Until one day Lemuel asked me to share our secret with one of Father’s colleagues, a faculty member here at the Center, one of my instructors, who’d