Prison Break

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

Hours later, Switch lay in her bed in her dorm, staring up at the bottom of the bunk above her. She overheard her roommates, Dora and Alanna, gossiping on the other side of the room about Arachnid, but she didn’t join in, even though she normally loved to gossip. She was still trying to make sense of what she had seen back in the Auditorium a few hours back, wondering if this was all some horrible dream she was experiencing, one that she would hopefully wake up from any minute now.

A nightmare, not a dream, Switch thought. And if I haven’t woken up yet … despite pinching myself a dozen times … then this isn’t even a nightmare, but something worse: Real life.

After the G-Men agent Vengeance successfully caught Arachnid, Headmaster Johanson had ordered all students to return to their dorms immediately while the G-Men and Secret Service searched the campus for any other possible threats to the President. The teachers were all posted outside each dorm, just in case Arachnid had any associates who might try to take advantage of this moment to harm the students. That was why Switch was back in her dorm. She knew that Bait was probably back in his, too, but she hadn’t seen him since he went after Arachnid and so didn’t know what his current status was. Her Blood Gem’s tracking ability had showed her that Bait’s Blood Gem, at least, was in his dorm, though given how Bait had not brought his Blood Gem to the speech in the first place, that still didn’t reassure her about his status.

There was still a lot of stuff Switch didn’t know. She didn’t know what Arachnid’s current status was or if the G-Men and Secret Service had found any more potential threats or dangers on the campus. She didn’t even know if the President had survived the assassination attempt. She hoped that Johanson would see fit to update them on the situation as it developed, but given how it had already been several hours since they had been ordered back to their dorms and they still hadn’t heard anything, Switch worried that the situation might be even worse than she originally thought.

“Can you believe that Arachnid actually shot the President?” said Alanna from the other side of the room. She was speaking in a whisper, perhaps to avoid waking Switch, who they assumed was asleep. “It’s crazy.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Dora, her Southern twang obvious even as she whispered. “I heard rumors that Arachnid used to be a supervillain before he became a teacher, an assassin even. Maybe he never really changed at all and was always just waiting for the right moment to put a bullet in Plutarch’s body.”

Switch’s hands balled into fists. If she wasn’t so worried, she would have jumped out of her bed to scream at both of them for being so stupid, but her worry kept her paralyzed in her bed. She was glad that she had pulled the curtain in front of her bed, because she didn’t want either of her roommates to see the tears running down the sides of her face.

It can’t be true, Switch thought. Arachnid is a good guy, a hero even. He would never kill someone in cold blood like that or even try to. He’s changed.

But Switch could not deny that she had her doubts. Like everyone else, she had seen Arachnid shoot Plutarch with her own two eyes. She wanted desperately to believe that Arachnid was somehow innocent, but she couldn’t keep telling herself that forever. The facts were the facts, and right now the facts suggested that Arachnid had indeed tried to assassinate Plutarch.

And if he succeeds, then this entire school will probably be shut down, Switch thought. It would be the scandal of the century if the President of the United States got killed here. It might even increase hatred toward superhumans. What would Bait and I do if the school closed down because of this?

Switch did not know. With both of their parents in jail, and no other relatives they knew of, she and Bait would be entirely on their own if the Academy was shut down following this incident. She wondered if Brains and Vanish might be willing to take them in as sidekicks or something.

It doesn’t matter, Switch thought. This is even worse than when Reagan betrayed me. I really thought Arachnid was good, but if it was all an act … if he was always evil and just hid it really well … then what chance do Bait and I have of becoming heroes ourselves?

A sudden knock at the front door almost made Switch jump out of her bed. She heard Alanna rise from her chair and go to answer it. She lay very still, listening as Alanna opened the door and said, “Yes?”

“Hi, Alanna,” said Bait, whose voice Switch immediately recognized. “Is Switch awake? I’ve got some news for her that the Headmaster wanted me to deliver to her.”

Switch immediately sat up in bed and pushed aside the curtains as Alanna said, “Sorry, Bait, but she’s still sleeping. If you’d like, I can—”

“Hold on!” Switch shouted, jumping out of the bed—almost falling in her eagerness to get out—and onto the floor. “I’m awake! No need to take any messages. I can take them myself.”

Bait stood in the doorway, looking over Alanna’s shoulder at Switch in surprise. “Oh, hey, sis. I guess you were taking a nap or something?”

“Sort of,” said Switch, standing upright and stretching her arms. “Why don’t you come in and tell us what’s happened? We’re really interested in hearing any updates you’ve got for us.”

Bait rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “I dunno. It’s a girls’ dorm, after all, and I’m not sure if it’s proper for me to enter.”

“Oh, it’s completely proper,” said Alanna, standing to the side to let Bait enter. “I—I mean, we don’t mind having boys in our dorm at all, do we, girls?”

Switch eyed Alanna suspiciously. She had always suspected that Alanna liked Bait—the constant side glances she gave Bait in the cafeteria or whenever they had a class together was a consistent clue—but this was the most shameless she had ever been about her attraction toward him. She didn’t think Bait noticed, but then Bait was usually oblivious to girls who showed interest in him anyway.

Pushing that thought out of her mind, Switch said, “Yeah, come in and tell us what happened.”

Bait nodded and stepped inside, closing the door behind him on his way in. He glanced around the dorm quickly—probably due to natural male curiosity of female spaces—before looking at Switch and saying, “All right. The G-Men performed a thorough search of the Academy campus, but didn’t find any other possible threats to President Plutarch’s life. They think that Arachnid was working alone, but the Headmaster still says that students should stay in our dorms for another hour at least. I was given permission to go out because I helped catch Arachnid.”

“Whew,” said Alanna, brushing a few strands of hair back. “I was worried for a second there that he might be working with someone. Good to know he doesn’t have any accomplices on campus.”

Switch should have felt relieved to hear that Arachnid acted alone, but somehow that just made the situation worse. From her perspective, that meant that Arachnid had attacked on his own, rather than as part of some greater group. He hadn’t even been hired to kill Plutarch, which meant that Arachnid had tried to kill him for his own reasons, a thought which left Switch feeling even worse than she had just a few seconds ago.

“What about Arachnid?” asked Switch, stepping forward and putting her hands together. “How is he?”

“Fine, as far as I can tell,” said Bait. “He’s currently in the custody of the G-Men, who are holding him prisoner in the Library basement. They’re going to transport him to Ultimate Max tomorrow and interrogate him to find out why he tried to kill the President.”

“You mean they still don’t know?”

“Nope. Arachnid has been denying that he has anything to do with the assassination attempt, but they’re not going to let him go until they can get Cadmus to read his mind and find out if he’s telling the truth or not. They did search his office, however, and found the gun which had been used by Arachnid to try to kill Plutarch.”

Switch’s heart fell. “So he really did try to kill Plutarch?”

“So far, that’s what the evidence suggests,” said Bait. He folded his arms over his chest and frowned. “Yet when I confronted him outside the Auditorium, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned the assassination attempt to him. Either he’s a compulsive liar who was trying to gaslight me or he didn’t really try to assassinate the President.”

“Did President Plutarch survive, at least?” said Dora, who was sitting at her desk on the other side of the room, her legs folded underneath her.

Bait nodded. “I think so. The Secret Service moved him out of the Auditorium. Last I heard, he’s in the Academy Clinic, where Nurse Irma is working on his wounds. He’s going to be transported to a hospital in Washington later today, once he’s feeling well enough to travel. Right now, the Clinic looks like a mini high security prison with all of those Secret Service and G-Men agents surrounding it.”

“That’s a relief,” said Alanna. “If the President had actually died here, that would have been a huge disaster.”

“Maybe that’s what Arachnid was hoping for,” said Dora in a conspiratorial voice. “Have the President die and then make the government shut down the school. I could totally see him do something like that.”

“I couldn’t,” said Switch, shaking her head. “This just doesn’t make sense. Arachnid would never do something like this. Not ever.”

“Well, apparently he has,” said Bait with a shrug. “You saw what happened. You were as close to the stage as I was. Then there’s the gun in his office and the fact that he used to be an assassin with the nickname ‘Bloody Knife.’”

Switch glared at Bait. “Are you saying that you think Arachnid never changed his ways at all? That he was always a supervillain and just hid his true nature from everyone all this time? Is that it?”

“I’m not saying anything,” said Bait. “I’m just pointing out that all known evidence suggests that Arachnid did it. The only part that doesn’t make sense to me is how he kept denying any knowledge of the assassination attempt when I fought him, but guilty people usually are pretty strident about denying their wrongdoing even when it doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he was framed,” said Switch. “Did that ever occur to you or are you just so eager to throw Arachnid under the bus that you’re willing to believe all sorts of bad things about him?”

“You know I don’t hate Arachnid, Switch,” said Bait in annoyance. “I respect him about as much as you do, if not more so. I’m just basing my conclusions on what I see and what we know. And what I see and what we know doesn’t make Arachnid look very good, to put it lightly.”

Switch huffed and turned away. “I don’t need to listen to this. I know Arachnid was framed. How and by who, I don’t know. If you want to keep believing otherwise, however, then you can keep doing that. I’m not going to try to convince you that you’re wrong, since you are obviously keen on disagreeing with me.”

“Switch, stop acting so irrational,” said Bait. “You’re always like this whenever we disagree about anything. Just because you want to believe that he’s innocent against all evidence doesn’t mean that I’m just as irrational as you in my position.”

Switch whirled around and pointed a finger at Bait. “I’m not irrational! You’re irrational. This doesn’t make sense and you know it.”

“It does make sense,” Bait replied, “at least with the information we have. Maybe that will change as new evidence comes in, but for now—”

Bait was interrupted by a loud ringing noise coming from his pocket. Bait pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up against his ear, saying, “Yes? Hello? Oh, hi, Headmaster. Any updates on the Plutarch situation?”

Bait suddenly went quiet as the Headmaster spoke, but Switch couldn’t hear what the Headmaster was saying. Not that she was very interested. She was more interested in Bait leaving her dorm and never coming back again. If he was going to keep accusing her of acting irrationally, then she wasn’t in the mood to talk to him.

“All right, I’ll let her know,” said Bait. “Okay, see you soon. Bye.”

Bait lowered his phone into his pocket and looked at Switch. “The Headmaster has summoned both of us to the Clinic.”

“The Clinic?” said Switch. “Not his office?”

“President Plutarch has requested a meeting with us,” said Bait. He shook his head. “Don’t ask me why, but he wants to see us. The Headmaster told me we needed to be there as soon as possible, so get your shoes on, because I doubt Plutarch is going to wait patiently for us to see him.”