The Orbist

Chapter 31

 We finally decided to tell the rest about it, and they all had similar reactions. Mostly they wanted to strangle me. But we needed to do our research. We walked to the nearest library, with grim expressions on our faces. No one wanted to look or talk to me except for Elian and I didn't blame them. I failed the whole group by not telling them, and I didn't deserve their respect or their trust.

 We entered the Central Arkansas Library(oh yeah, turns out we're in Arkansas now.) As the revolving doors closed behind us, we breathed in the thousandss of books around us.

    "Hey!" Ralph whispered to me, a stupid grin tugging at his lips. "Can you, um, do your thing?"

 Why not? I closed my eyes and began to look. I looked through all the books, every single letter on every single page. I began to blurt out titles unintentionally loudly.

    "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot-"

    "You can stop now." Elian looked at me uneasily. "Before you creep out every nerd here."

 I was baffled. In seconds, I downloaded a countless amount of information in my mind. I learned..so much. I swallowed hard, and straightened out my shirt.

    "Let's go." I huffed out.

 We walked together to the computer room, and all sat down at different monitors. I, like probably everyone else, clicked the Google Chrome icon, and entered "Ecators" in the search bar. The engine loaded for a bit, then finally showed me the results, and I found in front of me several websites about... Scrabble?

 What? I looked at everyone else's faces staring at their screens, and they had similar expressions.

    "This is impossible." Bryan stared at the screen in awe, then looked over his screen at me, on the other side of the table behind my own computer. "Are you sure they had a huge building in the middle of a city?"

    "I saw it with my own-" I replied, hoping they would believe me.

    "Then you have to try to remember." Ralph jumped in. "Was there a logo on it? Anything unique?"

    "I..." I hit my head with my fist. "I'm not sure."

    "Do your thing." Barry advised with his silly smile he always carries, even though all of us were clearly under stress. "Just see all the way back to that city."

    "I can't see that far. Not yet, at least."

    "So... the whole organization is practically a ghost ship." Levi leaned back on her rolling chair.

 The whole group let out a mutual groan, and I felt terrible. I looked back at my screen, and clicked the second page of results. More showed, and a certain result caught my eye.

Cayson Kindel

    "Guys, I think I found something."

 Everyone stood up and walked over to my computer. I clicked the link and waited for the site to completely load over an awkward silence.

 The site was blank, except for a few sentences right in the middle, in such a small font we had to squint our eyes to read it.

"Cayson Kindel...Male...White...Grey eyes...Vast Vision... Hea

To Kill an Orbist by Mr. Mac."

 We all stared at the text, slowly comprehending it. Hea? Heat? Heart? Heaven? The rest of the word wasn't there, and Mr. Mac wanted us to know that, otherwise he would have deleted the whole word. Finally, Mr. Mac added something. "To Kill an Orbist by Mr. Mac." What was that supposed to mean?

    "To Kill an Orbist... isn't there a book with a name similar to that?" Barry spoke up.

    "Yeah, it sounds somewhat familiar." Ralph exclaimed, and squinted his eyes further. "It's like... 'To Kill A Mockingjay'?"

    "I'm pretty sure that's a Hunger Games book." Levi spoke in.

    "Wait!" Bryan grinned. "I know that book! It's 'To Kill A Mockingbird'! It's super old!"

 I closed my eyes, ready to look throughout the library for the book, but Ralph put his hand on my right shoulder.

    "Save your energy." He decided. "We could just ask the librarian."

 We, as a group, walked over to the librarian desk, where she was already on another phone call. In a robotic voice she uttered into the phone:

    "They are walking here."

 Oh, no. I thought. Oh, god no. She looked up, and it was clear she was under the same control the previous man was, her eyes a very dull orange. She was about to hang up the phone, but I grabbed her arm to everyone's surprise.

    "Please." I begged, nodding towards the phone in her hands. "Tell Mr. Mac not to kill you. Give us all a small break."

 She looked at me with no expression, and pulled away with a surprising amount of strength. Then, her eye color switched from dark orange to a casual light blue in a second. She blinked, dumbfounded, and looked up at me, clearly free from any control. She pulled a strange smile, like she was trying not to weird us out and be good at her job.

    "I- I'm sorry, who are you?"

 We all let out sighs of relief. Elian spoke first.

    "We need 'To Kill A Mockingbird. For, uh, um, ah, uh, well you see-"

    "For a school essay." Levi finished for him. I stifled a chuckle. Looked like Elian didn't get a bit better at lying since the Florida University. The librarian nodded happily, and pointed.

    "It's down at the back, in the Classic's section. Look through all the titles, you'll find it in seconds."

 We nodded gratefully, and silently headed towards the section. No one else was there, mostly because it was the, um, "Classic's" section. I ran my fingers across all the books peaking out of the shelves, their titles inviting me NOT to read them. Little Woman? Of Mice and Men? Pretty sure that every time someone talks about these books, they have to begin with "Back in my day-". Bryan saw the look on my face, and pulled out Of Mice and Men. He dragged his finger tip across the smooth soft cover of the book, bringing dust from the book onto his fingertips. He extended it out to me.

    "This book is actually pretty good." He made known. "Teaches you about consequences."

 I looked around the shelves for a hardcover book to slap him across the face with, when Levi yelled:

    "Hey guys, look what I found!"

    "Shhh!" Practically all of us shot back, annoyed expressions on our faces. She pointed towards the books in front of her. What were these books? Exactly six copies of "To Kill A Mockingbird."

    "Let's look through them." Ralph directed.

 We all grabbed a book, and began flipping through the pages. At the author's note of mine, there was some scribbling below the actual typed note.

    "I found it." I whispered to everyone else. The group gathered around me, and read Mr. Mac's message along with me.

Did you have fun in the Breakfast Room?

 Breakfast room... wasn't that what Bryan called the dining room? The guy which was being used as a puppet wasn't on the phone talking with anyone at that time, which only meant one thing.

    "He was with us." The realization hit me like a brick. "He was in the exact same room as us."

 I closed my eyes, trying to remember who was there. A twelve year old kid with his mom, two ladies talking, an old lady... and a twenty year old playing with a Rubik's cube. The 20 year old...it was him... the guy.... Mr. Mac was there all along. I turned to the group, all of them eyeing me with concern.

    "I saw his face." I mumbled. "I saw Mr. Mac."

 They looked at me, astonished, but I wasn't done yet.

    "And..." I finished. "he's probably somewhere in this very library with us right now."