Two Schools Out - Forever

76

"Still smells kind of like explosives," Iggy muttered to the Gasman.

The Gasman sniffed. "Yeah. I like that smell. Smells like excitement."

"God knows we could use more of that," Iggy said.

Gazzy's footsteps were almost silent on the hard concrete floor, but Iggy could follow him with no effort. Even without Gazzy, Iggy could have found his way to the file room by memory. He bet he could even find his way back to the Institute if you dropped him into a subway tunnel in New York. It almost made up for being completely without any kind of freaking sight at all.

Yeah, right.

"Here we go." Gazzy soundlessly opened the file room door, and Iggy heard the flick of the light switch. Now he got to stand around like a coatrack while Gazzy did all the work.

"She put those files someplace toward the front of the room," he reminded the Gasman. "On the right side. Is there a metal cabinet?"

"They're all metal," said Gazzy, moving over. He opened one, riffled some pages, then closed it. "I don't even know what I'm looking for. All the files look alike."

"None of 'em are marked Top Secret in big black letters?"

"No."

Iggy waited while the Gasman opened and riffled through and closed several more file drawers.

"Hey, wait a minute," Gazzy said. "Huh. This is something. It's a bunch of files lumped together with a rubber band. They're a different color, and they look older, beat-up."

"So read them."

The sound of the rubber band being pulled off. Pages rustling.

"Whoa."

"What?" This was the kind of thing that made Iggy crazy: other people getting all the info much sooner because they could see. He always had to wait to be told stuff. He hated it.

"These are files on, like, patients," said the Gasman. "Not students from this school. These are patients, and they're from the... Standish Home for Incurables."

"What is that? Sounds like a whole bunch of not-fun."

Gazzy read, and Iggy forced himself to be patient.

"Wait-," said Gazzy, and Iggy thought, Oh, like I have a lot of freaking choice.

"This is weird. I mean, as far as I can tell, this school used to be, like, an insane asylum, until maybe just two years ago. These files are on patients who used to live here. But why is the headhunter saving them?"

"Maybe he had something to do with them? Did he run the nuthouse? Maybe he was a patient and he killed all the others and opened this school-"

"Can't tell. There's a lot of stuff here. Too much to read right now. Let's show these to Max. I can stuff them under my shirt."

"Cool. We better be heading back."

"Yep."

Iggy followed Gazzy to the stairs. Let's see, almost lunchtime. Wonder where Tess will sit today-Then Gazzy paused for a second, and Iggy almost ran into him.

"That's funny," Gazzy muttered. "There's a door here I never noticed."

Iggy heard him step forward and open it. Dank, cool air wafted out at them.

"What is it?"

"A tunnel," said the Gasman, sounding taken aback. "A long, dark tunnel going farther than I can see. Right under the school."