She just flipped her hair out of her eyes and took a sip from her pop can. "I don't know."

"What don't you know?"

She gave Elisha a puzzled look. "What on earth you're talking about."

"The kid who went over the wall."

She scowled and shook her head. "n.o.body went over the wall."

Elisha looked at Britney, but Britney had already caught a glance from Madonna. "Well, it isn't true anymore," Britney added quickly. "I mean, it happened, but now it didn't. Hey! The Booger game's open!"

"Wanna play?" Madonna asked.

"Sure," said Elisha. "What's the object?"

"What's the object!" Madonna and Britney thought that was funny.

"He got in trouble," said Eric, a wiry little guy who could talk while shooting alien s.p.a.cecraft out of the sky. He'd been at this one game for over an hour nonstop. "Got in a fight, so Booker and Stern took him up to the mansion, and I guess he got sent home 'cause we never saw him again. Of course, you gotta remember, that's just my truth. That's the way I saw it."

"You saw all this?" Elijah asked, watching s.p.a.cecraft disintegrate into flaming pixels.

'Just in my own mind. It's not true for everybody. But it's a great story"

"Did you know this guy?"

"Can't say I know anything. Don't know his name, don't know if he even existed-but if he did, I think he was a friend of Alex."

Elisha was just starting to win at the Booger game when someone nudged up close behind her and asked, "How's it going?"

It was Alex. Marcy, Britney, and Madonna turned all giggles.

"All right, I guess," Elisha answered, tapping away at the control b.u.t.tons, all the more motivated to concentrate on the game.

"Don't worry about what happened today, you know, with Booker," he said. "We're gonna even things up, just you watch."

Elisha, investigating, asked, "And just what did you have in mind?"

"Don't trouble yourself about it. I got other plans for you." He put his big hands on her shoulders and whispered something in her ear.

The Booger game began to flash. In only seconds, Elisha lost all her Kleenex points and the game ended in a giant, green explosion.

"Awwww. ... ," came a chorus behind her.

Chapter 7: Dorm Raids.

lisha could still hear the dull roar of the games and the heavy thumping of the music from her dorm room. It was after eleven at night. A few of the girls had returned to their rooms, giggling, gossiping, some tired and snippy, but most of the noise was still coming from the Rec Center. Marcy had not returned, and one look at Marcy's totally devastated half of the room told Elisha not to expect her anytime soon. Whoever Marcy was pretending to be, she was definitely not pretending to be anyone organized or disciplined, and one look at the hallway outside said the same thing about the rest of the girls in this building.

It had Elisha worried, not about the messiness, but what it meant and what it could lead to. If trash and clothing scattered about the rooms and hallways and graffiti on the walls didn't matter, what else wouldn't matter? Mrs. Meeks, the dorm supervisor, didn't seem very concerned. She hardly ever came out of her office to check on things.

Elisha reached under her bed and took her radio from its hiding place in the bedspring. Sitting on the bed with her back against the wall, she held the tiny microphone near the corner of her mouth and began transmitting. "Mom and Dad. In case you're within range of this radio ..." Just talking to Mom and Dad brought a wave of deep longing. "Hi. I miss you." She had to pause a moment and draw some deep breaths. Her voice was still choked when she continued. "Elijah and I are okay. We're trying to find a telephone or any other way to contact you. We've found the Knight-Moore Academy, and from what we've seen, there's no doubt that Alvin Rogers was here." She looked out the window and could see a few dim lights coming from the mansion. "And I think we've found part of the answer to what happened to him."

While Elisha was in her room filing a report, Elijah was taking advantage of the darkness, scouting the big stone wall that enclosed the mansion. He'd already circled the campus looking for a road and found nothing, so the only way in and out of this place had to be through that big iron gate and by way of the mansion. He thought he'd heard some vehicles coming and going up there. A mansion that size had to have a road leading to it, and that road had to go somewhere.

He continued along the wall until he came to the right lower corner. From there, the wall continued up the hill, shrouded by thick forest and darkness. He found an opening in the underbrush and pushed his way in. The brush was low and thin and moved aside easily, but the footing was a little tricky. He climbed, step by step, tree by tree.

When he had gained some elevation above the campus, he halted in a small gap in the brush and listened. Tonight's evening of "rocking out" was winding down. The music had stopped. Lights around the campus were blinking out. He was now closer than he'd ever been to the mansion and could see the big, lighted windows through the tangled tree limbs. He shook off a chill. Maybe it was the darkness, or the rumors he'd heard, but that place gave him the creeps.

Then he heard a strange sound below, a yelling, banging commotion.

"Don't these people ever sleep?" he muttered to himself.

Elisha heard the noise, too, only much closer. She jumped out of bed and went to the window It was too dark to see much, although she could see two or three bodies running around out there in white KM tee shirts. She heard a long, loud squeal and footsteps coming down the hall. It sounded like Marcy.

BAM! The door opened and it was Marcy, all right, her face red, panting, shrieking and giggling. "It's a raid!" She slammed the door shut, then grabbed a chair to prop against it. "I can't believe it! This is so exciting!"

"Who is it?"

"Alex and all the boys!"

Oh, great! "Where are they?"

"They're raiding the boys' dorm!"

The crash of a breaking window! Angry screams!

"Where's Mrs. Meeks?"

"I don't know!"

"Well, what about Mr. Stern?"

"I don't know."

"Leave the lights off."

Well, Elijah figured, with everybody having such a good time down there, I'll never get another opportunity like this one.

He continued up the hill, keeping the lights of the mansion off his left shoulder, trying to circle it until he found something. So far, he'd found plenty of loose rocks, tangled brush, and low tree limbs, but no break in the forest.

Then he saw something different-very vague in the dark, but different. The amber glow from one of the mansion's yard lights was reaching far back into the forest, suggesting a long, narrow opening, a possible road. He paused a moment to study it.

Then he heard something and quit breathing.

He heard it again. A low, close-to-the-ground snuffing, then a snorting. Some bushes rustled. Some twigs snapped.

Whatever it was, it sounded big.

Elisha and Marcy sat in their darkened room, peering out the window through small, cautious cracks in the curtain. There were voices out there, some whooping and hollering, some angry enough to kill. The voices were mostly male, but she could hear some females, too, some laughing, some screaming and swearing. Vague shadows were running in the dark, coming, going, chasing, brawling. Suddenly, startlingly, two raced by just outside the window, one pursuing the other, feet pounding the sod and breath chugging. The one doing the chasing caught up with his quarry, and with a violent jerk, ripping his clothes, dashed him to the ground.

"Okay, okay, I give," came a voice, m.u.f.fled against the ground.

But blows followed, fist against flesh, and grunts of deep, guttural pain.

Marcy gasped.

Elisha was reviewing in her mind the building exits and escape routes. "We may have to get out of here."

Bears are usually afraid of people, so Elijah tried hollering. "YAAA! GO ON! GET OUT OF HERE!"

The thing replied with a deep growl that filled the forest. More branches and twigs were snapping, each sound a little closer. Now he could hear and even feel the heavy thumping of huge feet.

"Guess this one isn't afraid," Elijah considered, but when a huge, furry form came charging his way, he was quite certain. He ran for all he was worth, widening the trail he'd made coming up, breaking out of the woods and into the field with a clear, new insight: "Okay, one thing's true around here."

Outside the dorm window, the rioting shadows began to retreat into the dark, their time of mischief over. A moment later, except for the soft whimper of a pulverized young man struggling to his feet, it was quiet.

"Is it over?" Marcy asked.

"Looks like it," said Elisha, feeling relieved.

"That was scary"

"Has this happened before?"

"No. Not like this. We've played some jokes on each other, but this was mean." Her frightened eyes widened in the dark and she gave a little gasp. "What if they'd come in here?"

Already, the thought had more than crossed Elisha's mind. "Good question, Marcy. What if they'd come in here?"

"They ... they wouldn't have done anything, would they?"

Elisha looked out the window, still afraid she might see shadows lingering and sneaking about. "When there's no right or wrong, why shouldn't they do something if they feel like it?"

Marcy had no answer.

Across the field, a tiny light began blinking. A flashlight, most likely, near dorm B. The blinking continued as the light waved back and forth, shining, then obscured behind something, then shining again. There was a pattern to it. Elisha had seen this signal before: the letters E, E, S.

Elijah! He was trying to signal her, using their hailing code, their initials! "Marcy! Do we still have that flashlight?" Every room was issued a flashlight, and now they could put it to good use.

Marcy groped about in the dark until she found their official KM flashlight where she'd left it, on top of the dresser. She joined Elisha at the window, handed her the flashlight, then knelt there, silent and spellbound as Elisha signaled back, ducking the flashlight in and out from behind the curtain to create her signals.

"Who are you talking to?" Marcy asked in a hushed voice. "Is this a code? Where'd you learn to do this?"

"Later," said Elisha.

Elijah, safe in his room, got her message: "DORM D RAIDED. WE ARE OK. HOW ARE YOU?"

He signaled back, using the curtain to make the flashlight blink. "OK. MAY HAVE FOUND ROAD. STOPPED BY BEAR."

There was a significant hesitation before Elisha answered, "REAL BEAR?"

"REAL BIG BEAR. SCARY.".

"STILL NEED BACK DOOR. DAMAGE HERE. FIGHTS.".

Elijah could hear Alex and his guys laughing and reliving the raid out in the hall. Freshly stolen KMs were jingling. "TOM CRUISE BEATEN. KMS TAKEN. ALEX WAS LEADER. BE CAREFUL."

"YOU TOO. I MISS MOM AND DAD.".

Mom and Dad. Elijah knew he would have missed them anyway, but this place only made their love all the more precious. He signaled back, "WE WILL SEE THEM AGAIN. LETS MAKE THEM PROUD."

"LY." Their code for "Love you."

"LY.".

As Elijah put away his flashlight, a chilling thought crossed his mind: What if we can't get out of here?

Nate and Sarah rented a high-performance, single-engine airplane and flew themselves to Borland, Colorado, in less time than it would have taken to fly commercially. Joe Pike, owner of a local hunting and fishing resort, met them at the airstrip in his SUV.

"I've been checking around," he said as he loaded their gear into the back of his rig. "It's like I told you on the phone. Sure, a lot of people remember the government having some kind of camp or something way up in Cougar Gulch, but that was a few years ago."

"We need to talk to those people," said Nate.

"And we need to see that camp," said Sarah.

An hour later, Pike eased to a stop at the end of an obscure, seldom-used access road. Nate and Sarah climbed out and looked in all directions, enjoying the scenery regardless of their serious mission. This was the great outdoors at its best: green, tree-covered mountains rising steeply on all sides of the valley, their jagged, snow-frosted summits stark against a deep blue, cloud-laced sky; the valley itself, stretched out like a green hammock between the peaks, garnished with young trees, a sparkling stream, and rustred outcroppings of rock.

"This way," said Pike.

They followed him over a berm of earth that blocked the road and into an open meadow where all the trees were young, only a few feet tall.

Pike stopped. "This is it."

They waited for a clue that he was joking, but it didn't come.

Nate walked several yards into the meadow, looking about. "There used to be a campus here? A whole academy?"

Pike pointed to a mound to their left. "There's some rubble over there, what's left of a foundation." He pointed ahead. "And there used to be a large meeting hall right over there. You can still see the base for the fireplace."

Nate walked far ahead and stooped down to pick up some broken brick from the remains of an old chimney. Carefully scanning the ground, he could see a vague, rectangular shape under the gra.s.s, wildflowers, and young trees.

Sarah took out the brochure they'd gotten from the former runaway named Tyler, and compared the photograph on the front with the terrain she was seeing now. The photo couldn't capture all the mountainous background, but it included enough. In the photo, behind a large hall, was the very same rocky outcropping and steep-sided valley she was seeing right now from where she stood.

"What happened to it?" Nate asked. "It couldn't have just rotted away, not in so short a time."