“A hologram?” asked Theseus, “But Godhand hates that sort of high-technology stuff, right?”

“Indeed,” nodded John, placing his glasses back on and observing the data on screen. There was no doubting what he was looking at: Godhand had employed use of industrial-level holographic projectors, far superior to the household devices they’d been using to cover their covert actions.

“Judging by the sensor readings – I won’t bore you with the specifics – it looks like they’re using a model from the past fifty years or so.”

“But why would they want something like that?” asked Andromeda, “What are they hiding?”

“I don’t know,” said John, “But there’s only one way to find out.”

Everyone always assumed John was an orderly, well behaved teenager; the sort of boy whose bedroom was always tidy and who kept his books in alphabetical order. Though a lot of those assumptions were true (except most of his books were scattered over his bedroom floor!), sometimes John liked nothing more than to flick a switch and trigger a thunderstorm. Technology had this wonderful capacity for allowing him to do just that, and now was a perfect example. With a flurry of keystrokes, he’d transmitted a signal capable of disrupting any holographic projection in a ten metre radius.

“Have a look outside,” he said.

Theseus crept up and carefully unlocked the door, then opened it a crack.

“There’s no one around,” said John, trying not to laugh at Theseus’s exceptional, but unneeded, caution. With an embarrassed grunt, he swung the door open and bathed the room in light.

“That certainly wasn’t there before,” he said. John and Andromeda joined him at the doorway and saw for themselves: five metres down the corridor, a whole section of wall had changed from red-and-white striped wallpaper to the cold grey metal of elevator doors.

“Looks like they have them located at points all over the manor,” said John, “I’m guessing there must be a lower level that only authorised members are allowed to access. The hologram is designed to switch off when it detects a certain signal,”

“Clever stuff,” said Theseus, eyeing up the corridor both ways, “Guess this is what Phoenie was on about with that whole ‘secret documents’ rubbish,”

“Certainly wasn’t what I was expecting,” said John, “We should get moving.”

The two boys ducked out of the door and scampered towards the elevator. Moments later, they were inside, with Andromeda slipping in just before the doors closed.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

Again, John was at a loss and busied himself with the elevator controls.

“What don’t you like?” asked Theseus.

“We don’t know what’s down there,” said Andromeda.

John admired the design on the cool buttons and wondered which one would be best to push: would it be the one marked B1, or maybe B2? What about B3? He knew the one marked with a bell icon was best avoided, unless they wanted to alert Godhand to their presence.

“If you were going to kidnap some innocent girls, wouldn’t you keep them in the secret dungeon?” said Theseus.

“To be honest, no I wouldn’t,” said Andromeda, “That’s not how Godhand works. They–”

John pressed B3 and hoped for the best.

“–don’t work like that,” continued Andromeda as the lift shuddered to life, “This is a bad idea,”

Chapter 17
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