It's the End of the World

Chapter 14

The next morning after I got finished with Mission 5, Justin texted me.

"Come home ASAP! I think I've made a breakthrough!"

When I got home, Justin had the computer hooked up to the printer.

"OK, this is what I've figured out. When I was trying to hack the Vespers, this kept on showing up." On the computer screen, there was something that looked like gibberish. On the back of some of the Cahill Vs Vespers cards, and on the back of all of the Cahill Vs Vespers card pack cards there is a design. That's what it looked like. "I thought it was gibberish, until I noticed that they were all a different design. They also go together to make something. It's like a puzzle. I figured out how to copy and paste them so we could print them out. I've got them all printed out. Now let's get started."

It seemed like it took me forever, especially with my OCD (I don't know if I really have it, but it kind of seems like I do) and having to have everything aligned exactly perfect, but finally I got finished.

"Yep," Justin said when we finally got finished, "it still looks like gibberish."

"Well those look like the zodiac signs and symbols," I pointed at a design going in a circle with a banner in the middle of a picture.

"Wait, are those gears?" Justin asked. He pointed at the very center of the picture.

"Yeah, so it looks like the Vespers are building some kind of machine."

"Hang on, it looks like a design for some kind of electromagnet."

"Wait. You said there was a gear in the middle of the design." I got out a file about Gideon's ring. "Well, look how there are notches on this ring. It kind of looks like a gear. In fact, that's actually what I thought it was when I first looked at it."

"So that's why the Vespers want the ring. So now we know what the Vespers want. They're trying to build an electromagnet that relies on the positioning of the planets."

"But why do they want an electromagnet?"

"If only we knew."

"What exactly is an electromagnet?"

"Here." He opened his science textbook. "Here's a picture of one."

"That reminds me of a picture I saw of the Earth's magnetic field."

"Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing."

I was daydreaming by now. "Do you think it's possible to make an electromagnet so powerful that it can affect the Earth's magnetic fields?"

"Yeah, mayb- Wait, say that again."

"Do you think it's possible to make an electromagnet so powerful that it can affect the Earth's magnetic fields?"

"That's it! That's what the Vespers want! They're trying to make a super-size electromagnet that can affect the Earth's magnetic polarity!"

"Why would they want to do that? What would happen?"

"Everything would be messed up. Everything electronical would malfunction. Planes would not be able to fly. Nothing would work. A lot of other stuff would be messed up too."

"That doesn't seem that evil."

"Trust me, it's bad."

"Okay, well, let's see what else we can find out."

"There are a lot of codes on here," I said after looking at it some more.

"Yeah. Now, how do we decode them."

"Look at this. There are some numbers under some of the letters. Hang on. OK, they spell Bancroft."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Hang on. There's some random words written on here. Arthur. Trent. Is dead. Well, duh, he's been dead for, like, ten years." We didn't know at the time about the texts that Dan were getting. "This is a substitution code. Hang on. It's going to take a while for me to solve it. OK. Guy Fawkes was V. Isn't that the famous cook?"

"No, Guy Fawkes fought during the Spanish-American war. You know those scary masks they have. The really white masks with the creepy smiling dude."

"Yeah."

"Those were based off of him."

"Here's a QR code. Two actually." It took me a while to download an app on my tablet. "Okay, the first one says Vesper One is closer than you think. The second one says Eureka. Why does Archimedes keep on popping up?"

"If only we knew."

"Here's an at-bash code. OK, it says 'Cascadia'. As in the National Park?"

"No, Cascadia is a subduction zone."

"Here's some coordinates."

"Write them down and we'll look them up later."

"Here's Morse code. John Wilkes Boothe was V. Now I know who that is. He's the guy who assassinated Abraham Lincoln."

"Yes. He shot him in the Ford's Theater in Washington. After he shot him, he jumped down onto the stage and yelled something in Latin that meant, Forever a tyrant."

"That's a Vesper for you. There's some more codes on here, but I don't know how to crack them."

"Well, let's take some time to do some research."

5 Minute Later

"Okay, here's what I've got. Bancroft is a non-profit organization that helps fight autism, and other brain injuries."

"Yes, because that's so Vesper-like," he said sarcastically.

"Hey, AWW was a 'non-profit organization'. Bancroft could be too."

"Okay," he said doubtingly, "well, I looked up these coordinates on Google Maps. They took me to a random house on a random island in the Pacific Ocean."

I looked up at my globe. "Something doesn't seem right." I traced my finger along where the coordinates would've been. "If I'm correct, the coordinates would be somewhere in America. Look that up on the internet."

"Okay. The first thing that popped up was a website on Mt. Shasta. I don't know what that has to do with anything. It might be a Vesper stronghold."

"I've got a whole bunch of stuff on Archimedes. Nothing that would help us."

"Okay, well, let's continue our work tomorrow."

If only we knew the trouble I would get into the next day.