Mirrors and Shadows

Chapter Ten

"Wait," I say, thoughts swirling around in my brain. "You said he was taken. What do you mean by that? Was he taken by the Emergent."

"No," said Mr. Ramble. "But it's complicated."

This just leads to more confusion and questions. "What do you mean, complicated?"

"Well," Benjamin says. "Long story short, we had to bargain him for the power of saving you from the Slumber. He's been taken hostage and if we don't save a certain beast called Mino, who has been captured and somehow controlled, he gets uh... a little bit uncomfortable."

"What?!" I jump up. "You traded him off, just like that?!"

"We didn't do it willingly!" Christoph says. "One minute, he was there. The next, he was whisked away!"

"Argh!" I shout, frustrated. "Then let's go!"

"Wait," Mr. Ramble says. "We still have plenty of time. You should have a lot of questions and they need to be answered. You'll be no use to the mission if you're going around not knowing what's happening."

In fact, he's right, I do have a lot of questions. And might as well ask them now, before the answers become too 'classified' for me to know.

"How did Colin do that stunt with the mirror?" I ask. "It shouldn't have been possible, given that using the Gift still requires at least a few seconds of concentration."

"Ah, that," Mr. Ramburt. "Nice observation. Every Emergent member has one, according to our knowledge. It was created using an extremely complicated method which included the crystallisation of accumulated Gifts, plus extremely rare minerals that can only be found in very specific places on Earth, in extremely insignificant amounts. The making of one mirror must have cost millions. It makes travelling through mirrors effortless and requiring no concentration, and can only be used by the owner of the mirror."

"Why don't we have them? Seems pretty nifty to me."

"About that..." Mr. Ramble mumbles. "Although we're doing this under the name of the CIA, we're not quite directly sponsored by them, so our budget is quite tight. In fact, only the director of the CIA even know that we're a training facility for children who are Gifted. The other high ranking officials just think it's a junior spy training school. Most of the people working in it don't even know we exist."

"Oh," I say. It never occurred to be that we were a secret to the CIA. Then again, I didn't know we were 'Gifted' until recently, and the thought never surfaced, what with all the excitement.

"There's something that struck me as weird too," I say.

"What?" the others ask, intrigued.

"How does the dean have a blueprint of the Emergent base, when it should have been top secret? How did he know it so well and could tell us the key positions where the cameras should be positioned?"

Mr. Ramble thinks about it for a while. "I don't know," he says. "Now that you brought it up, it is quite weird, don't you think?"

"And suspicious," Christoph says. "Do you think he's working with the Emergent, and this mission was a fraud to let the Emergent capture us? I mean, there was a large man blocking our way, clearly knowing we would be there, when the mission should have been top secret."

The others stay quiet, contemplating this thought.

Mr. Ramble speaks up. "No," he says firmly. "William would never do such a thing. If your theory is correct and he really is working with the Emergent, don't you think the Emergent would've put more people in the back? After all, they wouldn't have needed much defence in the front, seeing that we went down so quickly..." his face scrunches up again, and tears threaten to fall from his hard, rugged face.