Morganville (Justin Bieber)

Chapter 19

My TA was in his office. "Well" he said. "If you really want to shatter a lock, you need something good, like liquid helium. But liquid helium isn't that portable"

"What about Freon?" I ask.

"No, you can't get your hands on the stuff without a license. What you can buy is different formulation, doesn't get cold but it's more environmentally friendly. But probably wouldn't do the job" he tells me.

"Liquid nitrogen?" I ask.

"Same problem as helium. Too bulky" he sighs.

I sighed. "Too bad. It was a cool idea"

The TA smiled. "Yes, it was. You know, I have a portable liquid-nitrogen tank I keep for school demonstrations, but they're hard to get. Pretty expensive. Not the kind of thing you'd find lying around. Sorry" He wandered off, intent on some postgrad experiment of his own.

I bit my lip, stared at his back for a while, and then slowly moved back to the door that led to the supply room. The door was unlocked so the TA could easily move in and out. Red and yellow signs on it warned me that I was going to get cancer, suffocate or die if I opened the door. But I did it anyway. It squeaked. The TA had to of heard it, and I froze. He didn't turn around. In fact, he deliberately kept his back to me.

I let out a shaky breath, eased into the room, and looked around. The place was neatly kept, all chemicals labelled and stored correctly. He stored in alphabetical order. I found the liquid nitrogen, it was in a small tank with a shoulder strap. I grabbed it and read the sign that warned me to wear gloves too. The gloves were right there, I shoved a lake in my backpack, slung the canister over my shoulder and got the hell out of there.

The librarians didn't even give me a second look. I waved and smiled and went into the stacks, all the way to the back stairs.

The door was just as I'd left it. I fumbled on the gloves, opened the top of the canister, and found there was a steel pipette that fit into the nozzle. I made sure it was in place, then opened the valve, held my breath and began pouring the super cooled liquid onto the lock. I wasn't sure how much to use and kept pouring until the lock was completely frosted. Then I cranked the valve shut, and slipped the gloves onto my hands. I yanked on the door knob, it made a horrendous cracking sound. I jumped, looked around and realised the knob had moved in my hand. I'd opened the door.

Nothing to do but to go inside now, but somehow, that didn't seem like such a great idea, now that I was actually able to do it.

I sucked in a steady breath, opened the door, and carefully looked around the edge. It looked like a store room, stacks of cartons and wooden crates, files. No one in sight.

The cartons looked new, but the contents appeared old. Crumbling books, badly preserved. Ancient letters and papers in languages I couldn't read. I tried the next box and it contained the same things.

The book, they're looking for the book. Every old book they find comes in here to be examined. Now that I looked, I saw that the crates had small red X's on them, which probably meant they'd been searched. It meant somebody was working in here.

I had just enough time to form the thought when two people walked out of the mazes of boxes ahead of me. They weren't hurrying, they were just alarmed. Vampires.

"Well" said the short blond girl. "We don't get many visitors here" Except for the pallor of her face and the glitter in her eyes, she looked like a hundred other girls out on the Quad. She was wearing pink. It seemed wrong for a vampire to be wearing pink.

"Did you make a wrong turn honey?" The man was taller, darker and he looked really odd. It was because of his skin tone, I realised. He was black. Being a vampire bleached him, not to white, but to the colour of ashes. He had on a TPU purple t-shirt, grey sweatpants, and running shoes. If he'd been human, I would of thought he would of been old enough to be a professor. They split up coming at me from two different sides.