Blood, Sweat, and Hanon - A Ranger's Apprentice fanfiction

Chapter Twenty-Three - Will

Will sits down at the piano in the center of the room, the very same piano he'd played that morning. The same judges sit at the same long table against the back wall. The only difference from this morning is the piano students filling the chairs along the side walls. Apparently, they let people in to watch this round.

"Could we hear the Prokofiev?" Mr. Brunt asks.

Will nods. Mr. Brunt quickly moves to the second piano, and a moment later, the thundering opening chords burst out of the piano. When his entrance arrives, Will begins to play, the dancing chords filling the room. His heart rate accelerates, and he finds himself grinning. He loves this.

Behind him, the door bursts open, startling him enough that he forgets his place.

The judges stand quickly, their faces disapproving. Halt is veritably scowling. Will's back is to the door, so he can't see what's going on, but he sees Halt's face go white a moment later.

"There's a missing student," Mr. Baron's voice booms. "All auditions are put on hold until she is found."

Will whirls around to see Mr. Baron standing in the doorway, his face troubled. Behind him stands Ms. DuLacy, pale and trembling.

A cold fist wraps around Will's heart, and he knows what Ms. DuLacy's going to say before she even opens her mouth.

"It's Alyss Mainwaring," she says. "She never showed up for her audition, which isn't like her at all. And no one seems to know where she's gone. She's not answering her phone or anything."

Halt strides across the room towards Ms. DuLacy. He takes both of her hands in his. She's visibly upset.

"Pauline, did you see her after the callback announcements?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "No," she says.

"Did you, Will?" Halt asks, turning to look at his student.

"I saw her in the hallway outside the auditorium," Will says. "She headed off in the direction of the strings audition room."

Halt turns to Mr. Brunt and Mr. Baron. "Arald, Rodney, make a building-wide announcement over the PA system that all students are to gather in the auditorium. And lock the building doors. No one is leaving this building until Alyss is found or until we've searched every square inch of the building."

Mr. Baron nods and turns to leave the room. Halt pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and sends a few quick text messages, his fingers darting across the screen. 

"Rodney," he says, "Can you scan ID cards as the students enter the auditorium? And don't let anyone leave once they're in there."

"They might not still be in the building," Mr. Brunt murmurs.

Halt nods. "Yes, but we still need to know exactly who is where," he says. "And I've let my assistants know the situation. They're to meet us outside the auditorium in five minutes."

Will stands quickly, his audition quickly forgotten. He hurries to his teacher's side. "Halt, I want to help look for her," he begs. "She's my best friend."

Halt gives him a long look before coming to an abrupt decision. "All right," he says curtly. "But you're staying with me. Whatever's going on around here, it's getting worse. People have already gotten hurt. Come on. Let's go introduce you to the rest of the crew."

Will follows Halt out of the audition room, hurrying to keep up with his teacher's long, business-like strides. Halt leads him through a maze of hallways until they meet up with the main hallway. There's a long line of students stretching down the hall. Will glances over to see Mr. Brunt scanning the students' ID cards one by one before letting them into the auditorium.

Halt pushes through the line, and heads quickly down the main hallway, then turns down the hallway that leads backstage.

There's a group of perhaps twenty people, both faculty and students, waiting there.

To his surprise, Will recognizes some of them. Ms. DuLacy offers him a sad smile. And standing at the end of the line are Horace and Gilan, of all people.

While Halt's talking quietly with Ms. DuLacy, Will ducks down the line. "Horace! Gil!" he hisses. "What are you doing here?"

Gilan smiles quickly at Will, but he's missing his normal humor. He's more serious now than Will's ever seen him. "Sorry I couldn't tell you before, Will, but it was top secret."

"I just joined the other day," Horace says. "Halt recruited me after the incident with Alda, Bryn, and Jerome."

Will opens his mouth to ask another question, but he's cut off by Halt, who turns to address the group.

"All right, there's twenty-five of us here!" he says. "The plan is to divide into five groups of five and search every inch of this building. Each of the faculty members here can lead a group of four students. Pauline, why don't you stay with me."

Halt quickly assigns the groupings. Horace goes with Ulf Chevall, the bass teacher. Gilan and Will are in Halt's group, with Ms. DuLacy and a senior piano student named Paul making up their group of five.

Halt pulls out copies of a map of the building layout, handing one to the faculty member in each group. "The building divides evenly into five sectors," he says. "Northwest, southwest, southeast, northeast, and center. My group will take the center. Ulf, take northwest. Nigel, you and your group can search the southwest. Charles, you can go to the southeast sector, and James, take the northeast. Text me every twenty minutes with updates, or if you need anything or find anything. X off the rooms once you've searched them."

The groups split off quickly, heading to their assigned sectors. Will trails along behind Halt and Ms. DuLacy.

The center sector turns out to be the administration wing. Like the rest of the school, it's deserted. The group begins to sweep the rooms, checking in storage closets. Will is in charge of crossing off the rooms as they finish searching them.

It takes them an hour and a half to finish searching the center sector, and they find nothing.

Halt glances at his phone. "Nothing so far. Let's go help Ulf. The northwest sector is the biggest by far."

No one makes any argument. They follow Halt down the mazelike hallways of darkened practice rooms and classrooms.

The northwest sector turns out to be hallway after hallway of storage closets. Each is small, and dark, and locked. There have to be about two hundred of them. 

After three hours of searching, turning up nothing, Halt calls a break for food. Will is glad. His feet hurt, and he's tired, and he'd been getting a little shaky from lack of food.

It's getting into the early evening by now, and Will is starting to get really worried. What if Alyss isn't even in the building? She could be anywhere by now.

Three hours later, Halt's phone rings. He grabs at it and quickly answers the call. "Ulf? Did you find something?"

Will can't hear anything but garbled muttering from the other end of the line, but he watches Halt's face relax. "Good," he says into the phone. "We're on our way."

He hangs up, and glances up at his tired search party. "Ulf found her. She was locked in an old janitor's closet in one of the backmost hallways."