The lessons ended with Aerie scrambling every word on the board which the professor mumbled. It was boring. Aerie would rather have herself rotting in her room, reading all sorts of books, raising questions as she went, rather than sitting in the classroom and listen to all sorts of babbling by professors to a whole class of people.
But apparently that's how universities work anyways, right? She would only have to find the right chance to ask, and other than that, she would be fine.
And thats how one entire week passed in under a blink of an eye.
"Hey." Aerie said, tagging Brian, who had been sitting in the cafe for quiet a time now, "Tonight, right?"
"Yes." Brian replied, taking a slip of the coffee he had on his table, unrolling the roll of paper on the paper, "Our game plan."
"We would be meeting up at straightly 1:00am outside the hall, and then we would be sneaking in together. We agreed this, right?" Lily said.
"Right." Aerie continued, "so we wouldn't be bringing the big tools, since we are running around in forgiven areas. Wake up the latest by twelve midnight. And the process would take around an hour. We don't know anything about shifts, but there would surely be one between that hour. So you'll have to wait."
"Don't bring your mobile phones." Brian said, "we would be using walkie-talkie the whole journey. Untraceable and makes everything more effective. Bring batteries with you. When the electric fields get weird, new arteries can run out in a few minutes. So we should be prepared."
"So we are there just to see what would happen?" Lily asked, "what if nothing happens?"
"Something tells me that something would definitely happen." Aerie said, "I've been flipping around newspaper for a few weeks before this. And remember the death in the city hall a few weeks back? The one where a man in his twenties was found dead at the city hall, soaked wet from top to bottom yet have 90% of his body burnt? That one?"
"Yeah?" Lily asked.
"He doesn't have anything that can burn with him. The report says that he might have fallen into a fire pit, and then he threw himself into water to put out the fire. But I don't think so. You see, in order to get yourself with a very serious burn that would probably be fatal, you would have to at least be in fire for a pretty long time, say, 20 minutes for a person to start to burn real bad."
"But there weren't any fire cases reported in the past month," Brian said, "At least not serious ones. Like children burning their houses, those? We have a few but definitely not what we are looking for."
"Exactly." Aerie concluded. "But he does have a box with a lot of copper coils and red and greed LED lights on it."
"Its a communicator." Lily said, "by the size and looks, it should be self-made. Just like ours. Between ghosts. Usually green lights for 'yes' and red lights for 'no'."
"And whats more, the thrift store that you said you found your copy of the book in," Aerie said, "The side reports, which was not printed on newspapers, mentioned that he had been to the thrift shop for a good few times before his death. So what if the other products were also wrapped with the same book, but with other copies?"
"Where exactly did you get that repot, huh?" David said, finally breaking the silence he had been keeping.
"Usually there would people who want to dig into cases, say, private detectives," Aerie said, "and so there would usually be reports hangin around free around police stations. If not, with a bit of nice attitude and a nice explanation you'll be getting the copies from police people."
"Smart." Lily breathed, looking at her eye-wide, "You did that much research before this?"
"There's been a bit more free time than I expected." Aerie said, "and so, the conclusion. What if he was also one of us, reading another copy of our book, and got interested, and went alone."
"So he got burnt, really badly." Lily said, "did he went to the same location we did? We are sure that the location won't be the city hall."
"He ended up in the city hall." Aerie stressed, "nobody said that he got burnt there. If there's been a burn, it won't be reopened instantly the day after. But where we are going, an abandoned field, forbid anyone from entering starting from a month ago."
"Oh my god, Aerie." Lily breathed, "Thats a lot of research, don't you think?"
"So we would be needing fire proof stuff latest by tonight." Aerie said, "I've barely finished reading the stuff this morning, so I didn't make it to do the shopping too."
"Well, we can do it, right?" Brian said, "I'm getting excited."
"Right." Aerie said, smiling on the edge of her face, "So my lunch toady would be on the three of you."
"Guess I'll let you pass then," Lily said, "But just today, smart-head."
When the sixth cup of coffee of the day went down Aerie's throat, it was already eleven at night. Curfew must have passed, and the doors must have been locked by now. Aerie could not sleep at all, not when she was excited from head to toe, bliss running inside every inch of her veins. She watched as the clock ticked, as she got herself properly dressed. The classmates were definitely sleeping, and Brian would definitely be awake by now.
When the crows flew across the air, when the night breeze blew in Aerie's ears, she gently pushed the doors open and walked into the empty hallways, trying her best to keep her moves as soft as possible.
She waited at the the tenth floor of the building, the highest floor of the male's dormitories. Aerie switched on the walkie-talkie, remaining silent as she did so, hoping that the steady electric sound that it would produce would probably grab Brian's notice in the dead-silent atmosphere.
And with a minute in, her walkie-talkie also hissed with the sounds of electricity. Great, he's awake. Aerie thought, started walking towards the back stairs as planned. Soon, when she opened the door gently, a figure that was about her size, wearing casual t-shirt appeared in front of her.
"Hey." Aerie whispered, patting him by his shoulder, making him jump as his eyes shot backwards, "Lets go."
"You scared me." Brian said, "You're too quiet."
Aerie giggled. "Really whats so scary? I mean, we're not there yet."
"You know, detentions are the same, if not more, horrible than real ghosts." Brian replied, "I would rather have a ghost living at my home rather than a week of detention."
"Its not that horrible, you're being sarcastic." Aerie laughed out loud just to have her mouth covered by Brian out of fear, "sorry."
"Bet you never had any detention," Brian whispered back, "You know, having a teacher staring at you dead in the eyes every passing second? And then when theres only you, alone, in the detention room? I would die to leave there."
"You're being—" Aerie started, just to cut herself off in the middle of the sentence, "did you just hear that?"
"Hear what?" Brian whispered.
"Footsteps." Aerie said, "light ones. But heavy. Probably from leather shoes."
"You sure about that?" Brian asked, "Only security guards would wear leather shoes. And why the hell would they be here inside a back staircase??"
"Probably you. Or me." Aerie whispered in his ear, "if the security cameras caught any one of us walking into here."
"Then now what?" Brian screamed in a whisper.
"When I say run, we run, okay?" Aerie replied.
To Brian, the footsteps that he could not hear the moment before could now be heard pretty clearly. He footsteps were drawing closer, step by step, and now the both of them were sure that there were people coming from both the top and the bottom towards them. The two of them walked faster and faster as now the steps of leather shoes came at a much higher intensity.
"You think the children's gonna be here?" a voice from the top asked, "I think thats not going to be likely, look. Its so quiet here. Woohoo."
Aerie took a deep breath in. The two of them knew that the voice from the above, was definitely coming from them. After all, who else could have been here if not them?
In silence, Aerie drew an air-soft gun from her pocket, brought at the local toy store. In the silent corridor where the footsteps drew closer, she silently aimed it at the smoke detector three stories above them.
The chances of hitting it within one shot is low. And the chances of triggering the alarm with barely one shot is nothing more than zero.
"Stay here." Aerie whispered, voice starting to tremble as she spoke. After all, she also knew the consequences of getting caught running from curfew as well— she had been caught more than ten times back in her days in her boarding school and she knew that the older she gets, the worse the consequences of doing so. Detention is waving at them enthusiastically as she aimed.
"In the count of three, I will shot." Aerie said, "The alarm would probably be triggered, and they would be distracted, at least for a while. Then we would have to run."
Aerie's eyes closed when the count went to zero. And when she did, the gun fired and plastic bullets went into the air, breaking the silence between them.
The alarm was triggered as usual.
The security guards' attention were drawn.
'Run.'
And so the two did.