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34. Science

This morning, I almost thought Christmas came early. With the way Orion had woken me up, just about vibrating with excitement, he basically screamed at me that Roman had given us a really amazing Christmas present. He said it was better to show me than tell me, though we couldn't disappear to the library that early. Showing up to breakfast, lunch, and dinner is like our roll call. The guards take note of who shows up and who does not. If one does not show up, they will be searching for them until they are confirmed to be in the castle. It is why Scooby always make sure that whenever I'm out of the castle, I have to come back in time for those three times of the day. Also adding to the lovely morning was Zander flipping off a few people who rudely brought up his brother, some of which included the guards of the castle. When it come to the little kids greeting him good morning, suddenly he is Mister Rogers's younger regenerated form.

Once breakfast was out of the way, we went to our team office, also known as the library. Our laboratory, where we do some hands on activities, is Room 19, where the secret passage out of the castle is hidden. Solution 15 is hidden there at the moment, resting until we figure out what to do. And based on Orion's excitement, I think we may know our tactics quite soon.

As Zander and I entered the library, it was like entering a detective's office. He even has pins taped together, strings leading to other pieces of notes and all that. The old laptops that he fixed are on the tables, books are scattered throughout the room, and the USB flash drive that Roman provided is inserted into Orion's main laptop, which is old but the most updated one out of the others.

"Okay so I stayed up all night last night on the computer - "

Zander wiggled his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Doing research." Orion answered, emphasizing on his second word. "And as it turns out, Roman didn't just give you Virgo's projects archive. He gave us everything that Florencia has ever stolen and their information. Including the NASA tech."

"What?" Orion showed me the laptop screen, proving that he is on NASA's database. "How? Did Roman break into NASA? Because that would be super wild."

"No, he didn't." Orion dug up through a pile of papers. "I thought he did too, but then after looking through Virgo's classified projects, I found out that Virgo has been working with NASA, plus this other science organization called Silverstein. They've been doing some freaky projects together involving some werewolf. But that's not important. Virgo and NASA worked together on the tech!" He handed me the papers. "So, Virgo had some equipment that NASA needed, and so I'm guessing that Virgo agreed to give them the stuff as long as NASA agrees to let them in on the project. This was like, a long time ago though, before we were even working there. Report was like, years ago."

Orion showed me the reports, confirming that the two had worked together under a compromise.

"So, this is how you were able to have access to that scary tech? It's not just NASA's property, but Virgo's as well?" Orion nodded vigorously. "Holy shit." I sat down on the couch, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. Zander took the paper off my hands and used it as a fan to give me some air. "Thank you Zander." I exhaled slowly.

"We have the entire list of everything that Florencia stole and now, all their information. NASA's things are mostly what they can use for space exploration, which is why they have the tech. It's pretty much what we've guessed. It's like a device for projects that involve wormholes."

Over the next few hours, we organized all the information we gathered. We're going to call it the Tesseract, because Orion and I do not know exactly what it's called. But the Tesseract is what Florencia is creating, just as Orion suspected. The big tech in Florencia's lab is officially called Schrodinger's Transporter, which is kind of cute and appropriate.