She took a taxi to get there, and within fifteen minutes she arrived. Just like what she expected, there were only few people there, mostly the football players who were practicing for the upcoming competition. Coach Alto's voice could be heard even before she took her first step there.
She was casually walking pass the security officers to avoid any suspicion. It was only one hour after school time so they still let anyone to get in. The lobby was empty. There were no students or teachers. She walked as fast as she could down the lobby to the back and she realized there was Mr. Peak sweeping the floor near the backdoor. Alexandra went numb; she couldn't move.
"Evening, Mr. Peak!" she regretted greeting him. "Ugh, why did I say that!" she whispered to herself.
"Evening!" he replied and went out through the backdoor while holding the brush.
He didn't remember her at all!
She was relieved. She could now do her 'mission' safely. But her excitement faded when she saw a padlock on the basement door; there was no way she could break it. But the earth was on her side because when she held padlock, it wasn't locked.
"What a series of roller coaster," she said.
There was a mark on the padlock as if it had been broken by someone, but she didn't care. Slowly she closed the door so that no one could hear.
When she closed the door, she felt shivers down her spine. The air was pretty chilling and the dark surroundings made it even worse. She looked up the CCTV and her heart was beating faster when she saw it had been covered with a cloth.
She wasn't alone.
She quickly grabbed her flashlight from her bag and turned it on. She lit up her step so that she wouldn't step on something that would catch someone's attention. She reached to her side pocket of her backpack and took her Swiss blade. Learning from the police movies she watched, she shielded herself with the blade in front of her on her right hand with the flashlight on her left hand underneath it. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking and she could feel them getting colder.
She investigated each room through the window to see if anyone was there. The rooms were just ordinary; there were rusty and dented unused lockers, rotted desk and chairs, and multiple layers of dust on the floor. The sounds of rats roaming between the walls—and probably inside the lockers—scared her.
Before reaching the end of the hallway, she turned off her flashlight in case someone was actually there. When she reached the end, there it was; the room of mystery. The door knob was warm, as if someone had already opened the door before. From the window on the door, she saw a gleam of light from the inside, which looked like flashlight.
"Now where the hell is it?" a man said with Spanish accent. "Theo must've forgotten to leave it here," he kept complaining.
Alexandra was fidgeting her flashlight nervously and she accidentally turned it on. The strange man noticed a brief light that shone through the gap from below the door and it made the strange man moved closer to the door. He directed his flashlight towards the door and to his surprise, there was a girl who was watching him.
"Who are you! Reveal yourself!" he shouted.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you like that," she said while opening the door.
In front of her eyes, she saw a man in his late thirties wearing a worn-out t-shirt covered in pale blue shirt and long dark blue jeans. His hair was dark brown, a bit messy, and his eyes looked like pandas'. His eyes were wide open in shock to see someone else there. Alexandra had never met him in her entire life, but deep down she was certain that the man was Alejandro.
"Are you Alejandro, one of The Trio?" she dared herself to ask.
"How... how do you know? Did somebody tell you anything?"
"Your face is all over the place in the bulletin in the west bridge," she said. "I'm sorry, let's start it all over again. Hello, I'm Alexandra Wes-,"
"You're Alexandra?" he was surprised.
"I'm sorry, have we met before?" Alexandra asked while recalling if she had met this man before.
"Uhh, umm, never mind," he shook his head. "How did you discover this place? I thought I did good enough to avoid this place from the touch of students,"
"You broke the padlock, covered the CCTV, and I went in. It's that simple," she said. "Beside, I've been here before and well, strange things happened ever since. Like I went in to that lift and came out of it seven hours later and I got bru-,"
"You mean, you time-travelled?"
"Oh wow you love interrupting, huh?"
Alejandro pulled two chairs near him and placed it in front of each other. He gestured Alexandra to let her take her seat. She trusted him somehow.
"Yes, I knew things about The Trio and the rumored about kidnapping and all that. In fact, the three of us made that up," he said and left Alexandra with twitched eyebrows. "You see, this place used to be some sort of girls and boys hangout, only certain people can enter, mostly if you're a cheerleader, footballers, and popular and rich kids. Me, Theo, and Jeff were not one of them. We managed to enter to this school because of a scholarship, that most people who earned that scholarship were nerds and hated by the jocks. Honestly it's the first time I'm proud of being a nerd,"
"Anyway, one day, the three of us watched a documentary about time machines and we were planning to make one just as a joke. But then it became addiction and we kept making it. We came here late at night every single day for months just to make it right in this room because there was this old lift that was once used for teachers and principal, but they removed the machine and left the 'box' instead. We thought it was a good opportunity since it is made of iron. We bought a special lock for this door so no one was able to get here. Don't get me started on complaints from students because we locked this room. Anyway, after hundreds of failures, we finally made it and tried it. First we tried using it with Jeff's cat, and well, it came back two minutes later. Then one of us tried it, and after all considerations, Jeff volunteered,"
"There were buttons to decide how long you want to skip the time and Jeff chose an hour. He did it, an hour later he arrived back healthy, although there was a bruise on his arm, but that didn't matter because we thought it wasn't caused by the time machine. We all tried it, sometimes to do the exams or for betting with the whole school about who wins in football match. The more we used it, the more the bruises appeared. Jeff was addicted to it, he even used it more than three times a day, until one day, he didn't come back. No one knew where he was. His jacket and wristwatch were in this room, but he couldn't be found. His parents reported it to the police and they investigated the whole school, including this room. They found a big stain of blood on his jacket. We knew where it came from because a day before he was gone, he complained about his bleeding ears, but we decided to keep it shut. The police pronounced him dead, and there was funeral, with an empty coffin,"
"We started spreading rumors about serial killer wandering around the school and stuff, even now they called it 'The Dark Hallway' which is ridiculous in my opinion, but good enough to scare everyone away. Then we found out that the school banned anyone into going here, so Theo decided to disappear for good. Theo used the time machine to travel to avoid being seen and eventually decided to travel two years forward. I decided to not to because I wanted to take SAT, but then I failed getting into MIT so I traveled two years forward, which gave me a massive headache and nosebleed, and met Theo around a month later. And a few weeks later we both traveled two years forward again. Then we were married to our wives and remained shut about this. Though sometimes we still come back to use it. Actually now, I'm about to travel again to deliver some files, but Theo forgot to put them here," he said.
"You decided to travel because you failed getting into MIT?"
"Well, before Theo traveled, he told me to go after him if I failed so that we could co-operate to open a business together,"
"Why didn't you just stay?"
"We were devastated by Jeff's death and the police began their suspicion on us. We panicked," he lowered his tone.
"But your family? How about them?" Alexandra asked.
"I'm an orphan, so there was nothing much to worry. But it was hard for Theo though. When he was missing, people thought he was dead too. And you have no idea how many times the police interrogated me, they thought I killed them both," he laughed.
Alexandra was glad that she finally knew the truth. She was glad that they were alive, at least two of them were known to be alive. She thought that if the world discovered the time machine, it would be the most amazing science breakthrough.
"Come on, let me show you something," he said as he stood up.
Alejandro pressed the down arrow button and red light appeared. The doors were opened and made a small screeching sound, unlike the last time. "Down button for backward, up button for forward," he said as they walked inside.
"These eight buttons are your guide, the more buttons you pressed, the longer you will travel. You said that you skipped seven hours the first time you used this, so I assumed you pressed the '1' button, am I right?" Alexandra nodded. "We traveled two years, so we pressed all of them but the 'B' one. The travel only took around two minutes, but the sensation is massive,"
"Have you tried pressing all of them?" she asked.
"Well, based on our calculation, it can take us at least three and a half years, and we doubt that anyone can survive that," he said. "We've been discussing to stop travelling forever, but we don't know to whom to inherit this to, we thought you might be interested," he continued.
"How come? After years of travelling, and not to mention your success in making something that everyone thinks is impossible, you just let it all go?"
"I have three kids and own a big business and Theo has just started working for NASA, we're happy now and we're ready to live our life as it is," he said. "There's nothing much to do, but just make sure no one else knows but you, unless you want them to. Beside, we've been trying to get rid of it while ago but sure it'll take big machines which we can't bring here,"
"Are you sure about this? It's kind of odd, we just met and you just gave me this?" she asked.
"I know you deserve this, I just do," he said and grabbed his bag and walked towards the door. He looked back and took one last glimpse, "Just make sure you don't run into yourself and don't press the buttons after the doors closed. Always press the buttons before the doors close," he finished and walked away.
"Wait! Wait! What will happen if I meet me?" she asked and ran outside.
"Just don't," Alejandro said while walking towards the other end of the hallway. "Use it wisely!"
On the floor, there were piles of papers. Mostly were notes about the machine and blueprints. There was "The Guide to Time Travel" written on one of the paper. It has the manual and instructions on how long you would want to travel, both forward and backward. The paper had turned yellow-ish and on the right top was written 'AJT '97'.
"Alright, here goes nothing," she said and entered the lift. She pressed the 'B' button before the doors close, "Forty-five minutes later, here I come!"