Professor Layton: Conundrum of the Vanishing

Chapter Eighteen

The lighthouse smelled like feet.

That was the first thing Byrne realized after he walkede inside. He pinched his nose in disgust and pointed for a nearby staircase. "Let's go up there," he said. "Hopefully other rooms around here won't smell as bad."

"I don't see anything of interest in here anyways. Even if there was something around here, I doubt that it would be of much importance. Our enemies wouldn't leave anything around here on the bottom floor just of us to find and take for ourselves," Roman declared. He led them to the staircase and began walking up said stairs.

The next floor smelled much better than the bottom one. Byrne was exteremely thankful for this. He released the hand that had previously been pinching his nose and began to glance around the room.

He wandered over to a nearby table and looked at it. It was practically drowning in all sorts of papers and files on the men. None of them were of interest in his opinion, well, except for two of them that were near the bottom.

The first file was of a man with salmon pink hair. He had tanned skin and a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes. His name was said to be one Chase Swift. He was a man in his mid-forties and seemed to give off an aura of importance compared to most of the other men on the files. They all seemed to be bumbling idiots to Byrne, the following types who would follow any directions given out by this Swift.

Byrne had seen this in action when the case in Psylias was going on. All of the men had answered to all of Swift's instructions all the time. He still seemed new to the leader position, at least in Byrne's opinion. If he was an experienced leader, then he wouldn't have let him and his lackeys be caught so easily. Any experienced leader of a criminal group would know how to avoid being caught should a turn of events come around when they can end up being found out for their crimes.

Byrne folded up the papers on Swift and then tucked them away into his jacket pocket. He then picked up yet another file that was at the bottom of the stack, the other one that he had found intriguing.

The name was read to be Leo Phoenix. He was a man in his late thirties, about to turn forty within the span of two weeks. He had a wife named Brianna and a son named Byrne as well, which he had left behind before joining the organization of Targent. Byrne felt something pulling at his heart as he stared at the papers. He knew exactly who this was.

At the end of the last mess, the one that had taken place in Psylias, Byrne's father had disappeared after being revealed to be part of Targent, a criminal organization that wanted the technology of the Azran civilizatioin so they could use it to rule the world.

This proved that his father was in fact a huge part of this whole mess as well. Byrne rubbed his eyes as he tucked the paper away into his other pocket. He couldn't think of any other person whose files would be a huge help in this mess, so he left the table of files alone and then walked away.

Minori tilted her head to one side and looked to the staircase. "Are you hearing that? I can hear the sounds of somebody breathing," she said.

"We should go upstairs and see who it is. If it's just a single person who lives here, then we can drill them for questions and ask them about the case," Quinton asked.

"Yeah. Let's go on up there and see what's up," Byrne nodded. He walked to the staircase as fast as he possibly could, not sure of what else he could do. He wanted to escape the table and its surface of mysteries, but he didn't want to seem desperate at the same time, so he walked as fast as he could without looking ridiculous.

Upstairs was a door atop the stairs. Byrne found it odd that there was a door this one time, so he knew that there was something to investigate. He let his fingers wrap around the knob of the door and opened said door, peering inside with a small frown, somewhat afraid of what he might find inside of the room.

Inside was a metal door, one that you would expect would belong on a safe. There was a circle in the center that you could rotate to open it and a keypad in the center of the circle. "A password safe," Byrne muttered. "Just perfect."

"I think I know the password," Casey piped in. He walked to the front of the pack and typed in seven different numbers on the keypad before turning the circle.

The door swung open with ease. Casey turned back to the group with a smirk. "The password is Targent. The people who are living here are agents of Targent, so it's pretty obvious that their password would be something like that. You know... Something that they can all remember," Casey said.

They walked through the metal door and were instanty hit with the sound of breathing. This was the sound that they had been hearing from the second floor. Byrne was okay with that when he saw who it was that was lying inside.

Curled up in different corners of the room were three different people. The first and second had hair draped over their faces and the final had hair in a ponytail that spiked every which way just behind their neck. None of them opened their eyes when the door was opened, so Byrne knew that they were asleep, though unconscious was probably the better word to describe it.

After all, Foliis, Faith, and Fey had been unconscious the last time Byrne had seen them.

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I'm on spring break this week woo

Also my updates for today are going to be this update and two for this book to catch up on this book

I'll update this book once and LSG twice each day between tomorrow and Saturday so two books will finish then

I need to get the cover ready for the sequal oops-

-Digital