The Prodigies [First Draft]

Twenty Seven

Kenny found the rest of her day quite dull as she waited for her meeting with Einstein. Gradually, her thoughts of the Darkness yielded to thoughts of the files in her backpack as her classes came to an end. She hurried to the library once the final bell for the school day had rung, carrying her books rather than putting them in her backpack to save time. She arrived at the library at 3:01, which Einstein made sure to point out when she entered the room.

"Have you brought the files, mute?" the boy asked.

Kenny nodded and set her things on the table. She sat across from Einstein, which was as far as she could get from him without moving to another table. Before getting the files out of her backpack, she took her cards from her pocket and pushed one towards Einstein.

My name is Hawking, the card read.

The boy gave her an odd look. "And mine is Einstein. What are you trying to accomplish?"

Stop calling me mute, Kenny replied with another card. That's impolite.

At this, Einstein laughed. "Just show me the files, mute. We don't have all day."

The young girl stared at him incredulously. She had known there was a slim chance of getting Einstein to call her by her nickname, but she hadn't expected him to respond this way. That's impolite, she replied once more. She pointed to the card that announced that her name was Hawking.

Einstein sighed irritably. "Fine, I'll call you Hawking for a little while. But don't expect me to do this for you in front of the rest of the A-listers. Or anyone I know, for that matter."

Kenny didn't know whether to smile or to scowl. Instead, she took the files from her backpack and dropped them on the table with a thud. Einstein pulled the stack of folders toward him, opening the first one to observe the balderdash written on the pages inside of it.

"Alright, Hawking," Einstein began, "this has to be written in code. I'm not sure what code it is, though. We're not going to be able to search for anything on these computers here because there's something wrong with them. I asked Miss Gavin before you came in, and she told me there was some sort of virus going around AGC computers, so it's best for us to use books for our research."

Kenny nodded and stood from her chair. She led Einstein to the nonfiction section. She had often seen titles on codes and ciphers, for the books resided only two shelves away from the medical books Kenny used to search up the Darkness. The girl averted her gaze from the familiar section and focused on the books before her. Einstein knelt down to look over the books on the bottom shelves.

"Here are several books we can use," the boy murmured as he took the books off of the shelf. "Hold them. I'll look for more."

Within minutes, the two children had gathered many titles for them to use to begin their research. Before they started looking for the code the files could be written in, Einstein tuned to Kenny.

"I wanted to ask you something. You say you have Black Outs, correct?"

Kenny nodded, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.

Einstein looked down at the files sheepishly. "Well, I didn't quite specify what kind of black outs I was talking about yesterday. There are several types, in fact, but only one of them is spelled with a capital B and a capital O. Only this kind is spoken of in the files, so I'll need you to describe what happens when you are unconscious."

Kenny pursed her lips in irritation. So Einstein had been lying to her. She'd thought the files would allow her to finally understand what was going on with her. With this new information, there was a possibility that the files spoke had about as much intelligence on the Darkness as the medical journals. He had just done this to take the files from her--