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The list continued down the page, but there was no listing for Aven. Alex returned back to the yearbooks and sighed as she took in the overwhelming amount of data that she would have to sift through in order to find the mysterious stranger.

Better get started, she thought to herself as she opened up a random year,because it’s going to be a long night.

“You’ve been here long enough, Bookworm. It’s time for some fun.”

Alex looked up at Jordan and Bear’s expectant faces and said, “But I haven’t found anything yet!”

“That’s too bad,” Jordan said, without much sympathy. “But you can come back tomorrow. It’s almost curfew and there’s more for you to see before we leave.”

Alex consented without further arguing. They’d given up their night for her, after all. And their dinner.

“Now, in the future when you come down here, to get out again you just have to go back into the room with the slide, open the encyclopedia to the last page, and press your hand to the paper,” Bear explained. “You’ll see a door appear in the wall and when you go through it you’ll find a Bubbledoor that’ll take you straight back to where you first picked up the encyclopedia—which will also disappear during transport, by the way.”

“Why are you telling me and not showing me?”

“Because we’re not leaving that way,” Jordan answered with an excited gleam in his eyes.

She rose from her seat and stretched the kinks out of her back. “How are we getting out of here, then?”

“Keep up and you’ll see soon enough.” That was all Jordan said before he spun on his heel and walked away, jerking his chin as an indication that she should follow.

She glanced at Bear and he winked before heading in Jordan’s footsteps.

Alex trailed after them, shaking her head.Boys.

The Archives had cleared out significantly of people in the hours that she’d been researching, but there were still a few stragglers lingering around. Because of this, Alex wasn’t completely surprised when Jordan and Bear led her towards a corner at the back of the room that was out of sight.

“Have a seat here and we’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Bear said.

The moment Alex’s backside touched the ground, she was airborne. It was a completely unexpected sensation, especially since she was movingupwards, and at an incredibly fast speed.

Alex gasped and glanced down to find that she was still sitting on the floor, but only a square metre of it which was acting as her express elevator—‘express’ being the key word.

She didn’t even have time to scream before she slammed into the ceiling.

Fifteen

I’m dead, Alex thought. Squashedlike acockroach. What a way to go.

Only, she wasn’t squashed. And she wasn’t moving upwards anymore, either.

Alex opened her eyes—not even sure when she’d closed them—and carefully looked around. She was sitting on the floor still, but the Archive terminals were nowhere in sight.

She realised that she must be on another level of the library, and she hurried to move off the ground in case her friends came up after her. The instant she moved aside, the square metre of elevator floor vanished into thin air and Bear was propelled into view.

He grinned at her.

She glared at him.

Then the floor disappeared again, causing Bear to scramble quickly to the side.

“That is such a safety hazard,” Alex mumbled as Jordan appeared on his own carpet square.

“Nothing to it,” Jordan said, standing and brushing off invisible dirt.

“Feel free to tell me the next time something like that’s about to happen,” Alex said pointedly.

Jordan and Bear looked at each other and chorused: “That would’ve ruined the surprise!”