Henri Beck & the Hidden Library | 📖

6

"You found this on...accident?"

Thea had her hands placed firmly on her hips as she stared at the hidden room in the attic with furrowed brows and narrowed eyes.

"I knew you'd find something," Malik said while giving Henri a congratulatory pat on the back. The brown-eyed boy beamed brightly at him in reply.

Upon finding that secret annex in his father's study, he took it upon himself to do some more snooping before he told Thea and Malik. Considering it was concealed by a massive bookshelf, the room didn't do much to hide what remained inside. It was more of a closet than anything. The narrow walls and low ceiling were just big enough to fit a tiny desk and a few metal filing cabinets. The size of the room wasn't important. What waited for them inside was what mattered.

"It was a moment of genius," Henri said as he stepped past his sister, answering her earlier question. "I noticed one of Dad's favorite books wasn't positioned naturally and decided to give it a pull. He rigged it to control the entrance to whatever this secret room is."

"I can't believe Dad's been spending all his time in a literal hole in the wall," Thea said with an incredulous shake of her head.

"Whatever he's been doing in there, it's kept him busy."

Very busy.

Henri gestured at the brown wallpaper surrounding them, which was covered in maps, haphazardly-placed sticky notes, and scrolls covered in hieroglyphs. Thumbtacks holding up bright crimson thread ran along the walls. A spiderweb of crisscrossing lines connected random pieces of evidence together, stringing together frenzied thoughts and forming silent theories. It resembled the work of a paranoid schizophrenic. He couldn't believe it was a creation from one of their world's brightest minds.

In the desk pushed in the corner of the room was even more information. Earlier that morning, he discovered a stack of letters written by his father and a few other correspondents from across the globe. None of the names rang any bells in Henri's head. Had they been any of his father's regular scholarly pen pals, who famously called themselves The Last Librarians, he would've known. Not a single name in those letters was a part of that club—or any other organization Henri knew his father to be a part of.

While most of the mailing stamps told Henri the letters were sent from out the United States, one happened to be based out of Washington D.C. He hadn't gotten through them all yet, but each one he did read centered around a single topic: the Great Library of Alexandria.

Those messy, handwritten letters on coffee-stained parchment confirmed his theories all but true; his father had been searching for the library. He also wasn't the only one. Whoever Sergei worked for was looking for it too—and they'd do anything to find it.

He wanted to question why someone would go to these kinds of lengths, but he knew exactly why. His few years spent around other rich children at Westminster Academy taught him a plethora of valuable lessons. Most of them weren't learned in a classroom. People would do anything for fame, money, or attention. Henri was willing to bet his entire inheritance that whoever else was searching for the library was gunning after all three.

Rediscovering the Great Library of Alexandria would be deemed the greatest feat of the modern era. It hadn't been found for thousands of years since its gradual decline centuries ago. No one believed it, or the millions of pages of knowledge it was said to hold, still existed in any capacity.

But his parents knew something he didn't.

Apparently, so did Sergei and his employer.

Thea and Malik entered the hidden room behind him.