The Backstagers and the Theater of the Ancients (Backstagers #2)

by Andy Mientus

  Another light revealed Beckett, posed like a superhero.

  “I am Beckett, St. Genesius’s newest director, and I’m about to bring down the curtain on your little charade!”

  Another light hummed on.

  “A dark presence, a son of the moon and all her powers, I am Reo, prop master of Genesius, and I bind you against doing harm, Thiasos!”

  Another light revealed Aziz and Adrienne. He translated as her hands flew, signing as if she were flinging attacks in a ninja-fighting video game.

  “Silent but deadly, the Genesius Backstagers emerge from the shadows to autumn—I mean, to PUNISH you!”

  The last light revealed Sasha and his Master Switch.

  “And I am Sasha, wielder of the legendary Master Switch. Your scene ends here with a dramatic BLACKOUT!”

  With that, Sasha slammed the switch down and the whole space plunged once again into darkness. There was a great scuffle in the dark. After a few chaotic moments, a new spotlight burst downward, illuminating the space. Niko and Aleka, now on the ground where they had fallen, shielded their eyes against it. Once their eyes adjusted, they saw the whole crew of St. Genesius Backstagers, finally reunited, Jory at the front of the group, holding his newly recovered notebook aloft like a great holy weapon in an epic fantasy.

  “We are the Backstagers,” Jory said triumphantly, “and no matter how many legendary artifacts you have, you can’t stop us, because we are legendary!”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Light our way home!” Sasha cried as he flipped the master switch again and pools of light illuminated a way through the dark tunnels.

  “How are you doing that?!” Jory asked.

  “I’ll explain later, just sketch something to help us get out of here, fast!”

  Jory flipped open the notebook. With the pencil he nabbed from Aleka, he sketched seven bicycles, which appeared instantaneously. He jammed the notebook into his backpack as Sasha snapped the Master Switch to his belt.

  “Come on!” he shouted as the Backstagers mounted the bikes and pedaled along the path of lights.

  The Thiasos siblings watched, furious as not one but two legendary artifacts raced away from them into the darkness. Niko stood and raised the God Mic to his lips, pressed on a certain sigil carved into the side, and proclaimed, “I summon you, Cerberus! Hydra!”

  A fiery portal split the darkness of the backstage with the sound of a thunderclap and through it galloped two enormous beasts, one a three-headed black dog and the other a three-headed blue dragon, each with three mouths full of razor-sharp teeth. The beasts roared as they appeared before bowing to their summoner. Niko climbed atop the Cerberus. Aleka mounted the Hydra.

  “Get them!” Aleka cried, and the two beasts bounded after the Backstagers, down the path of lights.

  “UM, GUYS?!” Beckett shouted as he looked back. “PEDAL FASTER!”

  The Backstagers turned and saw the Hydra and the Cerberus, piloted by the Thiasos siblings, roar after them with their fangs bared.

  “You know, Jory,” Aziz shouted, “you could have sketched us an armored car, or a rocket ship or something!”

  “Do you know how to drive a car or a rocket ship?!” Jory shouted back.

  “What do we do?” Hunter, never much of an athlete, was starting to get tired. His bike drifted to the back of the pack, where the six gaping maws of the mythical beasts bit and slobbered.

  “We can’t go back to the Unsafe door,” Beckett said. “We’ll put the other students in danger. We need someplace to fight them, someplace open.”

  “Jory!” Reo cried. “It’s time to show them what we’ve been working on!”

  “Yes!” Jory replied. “Sasha, reroute us to the Greenroom!”

  “The WHAT?” Sasha said, his tiny legs pedaling at warp speed to keep up with the pack.

  “Just trust me! Can you make that thing take us to a room called the Greenroom?”

  “I think so!” Sasha thought hard, reached down to the switch on his belt, and pressed it. The path of lights suddenly diverted around a corner and the Backstagers made a quick turn. The beasts, less agile and much bigger, crashed into the wall of the tunnels in a heap. Aleka screamed in fury.

  “Get UP! They’ll get away!”

  The beasts shook off the fall and started after the Backstagers once again.

  Adrienne looked to Aziz as they pedaled, scared. She couldn’t hear any of their conversation and couldn’t lip-read while they were all speeding through the dark. He nodded to her and she knew he meant trust me. She did trust him and quickened her pace.

  Soon, she noticed that the smooth floor of the tunnels had become bumpier, the feeling of riding on a rough trail in the woods. As they pedaled along, light began to fill the space at last, like dawn breaking slowly. As their eyes adjusted, she and the others could see that they were pedaling on fresh green grass and uneven terrain. They started up some kind of hill, which slowed them down a bit, but soon they crested the hill and coasted down its other side, exploding into the vast sunny expanse of the Greenroom.

  As always, the sky was a spotless blue. Hunter marveled at the beauty of its rolling hills, streams, boulders, and trees and the mystery of the rows of doors that flanked its borders. That is, until he remembered that they were being hotly pursued by two multi-headed monsters. The beasts were just a few paces behind them, charging down the hill into the open field, lashing their many tongues.

  “You go for the switch,” Aleka called to her brother, “I’ll go for the notebook!”

  Niko, atop his Cerberus, charged for Sasha while Aleka and the Hydra split off after Jory. They pedaled hard in opposite directions as Aziz, Adrienne, Reo, and Hunter skidded to a stop.

  “Take cover!” Jory shouted to the Backstagers as he ditched his bike and pulled the notebook and pencil out of his bag.

  “And do what?!” Reo asked.

  “I don’t know! Think of a plan!”

  Reo spotted a large boulder at one end of the field and waved the other Backstagers to follow him. When they were safely behind it, they collapsed off their bikes, their lungs burning with exhaustion.

  With its target now on foot, the Hydra reached Jory quickly, but soon Aleka realized that Jory had given up the bike so that he had his hands free to draw. As he sketched furiously in the notebook, arrows, swords, lances, wrecking balls, bricks, and all other manner of blunt and sharp objects that Jory could think of materialized in the air and sailed at the Hydra’s heads, deflecting its snapping jaws.

  Meanwhile, Sasha pedaled as fast as he could while the Cerberus bounded after him. He tried to outpace it, but in the open field, without twisting and turning tunnels to slow the monster down, he stood no chance. His wheel caught a small rock and he crashed off his bike, tumbling into the grass. He stood, and turned to find the creature towering above him, its three snarling jaws dripping drool and plumes of hot, ancient dog breath.

  Niko flashed a wicked smile. One of the heads surged forward toward Sasha and suddenly the sunny day of the Greenroom disappeared into perfect darkness. Then reappeared in perfect sun again. When Niko and the Cerberus could see again, they discovered Sasha, unharmed, a few paces away. They charged. Again the lights went black. When they returned, Sasha was again just out of harm’s reach. The Cerberus roared in frustration.

  Meanwhile, these blackouts were seriously messing with Jory’s ability to sketch. He was in the middle of a brick fortress to encase the Hydra when the lights went out. When they came back on, the Hydra easily escaped its only partially completed confines and charged once more. A sketch of a shield was only half complete when the next blackout occurred and one of the Hydra’s heads slipped through the unfinished side and gave Jory a nasty nip in the shoulder.

  “Sasha!” he shouted across the field. “A little warning please!”

  “Sorry!” Sasha called back. “Tell me when!”

  Jory sketched ropes around the Hydra’s feet as Sasha ran from the Cerberus.

  “Go!” Jory s
houted as the Hydra tripped and toppled.

  The Cerberus made a lunge for Sasha. Blackout.

  Just as the lights came up and Sasha had found refuge behind a tree, the Hydra broke free of its ties and bounded once again for Jory, who had put some fifty yards between himself and the monster. It spotted him and gave chase.

  The Cerberus began sniffing the ground with its three wet noses. It bolted upright and turned its three heads to a tree a few paces away. It was on Sasha’s scent.

  Jory scribbled in the notebook, and a raging river poured through the field, cutting a barrier between him and the Hydra, which skidded to a stop at its bank, wary of the gushing current.

  “Go!” Jory shouted, and just as two slobbering Cerberus heads peeked around either side of the tree, spotting the huddled Sasha, Sasha flipped the switch on his belt and there was another total blackout.

  When the lights came back, Sasha was racing toward a more densely wooded part of the field, its many trees offering some shield against the hulking Cerberus.

  The Hydra, at Aleka’s command, took a few steps back and, with a running start, leaped across the entire river and landed with a thump at Jory’s feet. It roared in victory, but Jory, with a slash of his pencil, conjured a giant sword that lopped all three of the Hydra’s heads off. Jory cheered.

  “Jory, NO!” Beckett shouted from his vantage point behind the boulder. “Didn’t you pay attention to the mythology unit in English class?!”

  “What?!” Jory shouted back.

  “Enough of this!” Niko shouted from atop the Cerberus.

  He held the God Mic aloft in his hand, and with a press of one of its glyphs, a horrible, piercing siren blasted through the field. All of the Backstagers grasped their ears and fell over in pain.

  All but one, that is. Adrienne stood defiantly behind the boulder, hearing aids in her hand.

  Jory’s ears throbbed, but after a few moments, despite the sonic blast raging through the Greenroom, he was able to regain his senses enough to lift his head. The Designer’s Notebook lay a few feet away from him in the grass. Aleka’s Hydra loomed just a few feet farther. Jory watched in horror as it grew six new heads, two for each of the heads he’d chopped off. Aleka laughed wickedly, unaffected by the God Mic’s blast. Jory reached for the notebook but was met with five snarling dragon heads as the sixth snapped up the book and delivered it to Aleka.

  “I’ve done it!” she cried. “I’ve gotten the legendary Designer’s Notebook!”

  CHAPTER 16

  As the siren wailed on, Sasha clutched his ears and ran as fast as he could through the forest. Niko’s Cerberus was too big to run nimbly through the dense trees, but with its three strong jaws of sharp teeth, it chomped through bark and tore out roots at an alarming rate. Sasha was able to keep safely ahead of them, but the strain of the running and the pain of the God Mic’s siren were about to overwhelm him. He could see the edge of the forest approaching—nowhere left to hide.

  Jory reached the boulder where Reo, Beckett, Aziz, Adrienne, and Hunter were hiding. Though he couldn’t speak over the scream of the siren, his look of dread told them that the notebook was lost. Hunter let go of his ears for a moment to embrace Jory tightly, relieved that he was safe. Adrienne knelt down to Aziz, took his face in her hands, and looked into his eyes as if to say, Focus. Stay with me.

  “Trust me,” she signed. “I have a plan.”

  Aziz nodded through his agony. He trusted her completely.

  Her hands flew as she laid out her scheme, and Aziz had to smile. Adrienne was a genius. They hugged and on the count of three, ran off in opposite directions—she toward the forest and Aziz toward the edge of the field and its row of doors.

  Meanwhile, the Cerberus thrashed through the forest hungrily, cutting a clear path to Sasha. With just a few yards of trees left, Sasha had a decision to make: keep running, or use his switch once again to hide. He was completely exhausted and couldn’t keep this up much longer. He chose to hide, flipping his switch to black out the field once again. He took refuge behind one of the remaining trees and gasped for breath.

  Suddenly, a giant spotlight appeared over the forest, illuminating the area.

  Sasha flipped the switch again and it blacked out.

  Another hummed on from a different angle.

  Sasha blacked out the field again.

  The Cerberus came closer.

  Aleka, galloping toward the forest on her six-headed beast, drew another light in the Designer’s Notebook.

  Sasha flicked his switch down again.

  He felt hands tear the switch away from him in the darkness.

  “No!” he cried.

  Aleka drew another spotlight and this time, Sasha could not make it go dark. He sprinted out of the forest into the open field.

  “There!” Niko shouted to Aleka, spotting Sasha as he tried to escape.

  Aleka scribbled and Sasha fell to the ground, bound in ropes.

  The Thiasos siblings atop their mythical beasts raced to the squirming, trapped Sasha. Niko tapped the glyph on the God Mic again, and the siren stopped at last.

  “Just hand it over, kid,” Niko said. “We’ve all been through enough today.”

  “I don’t have it!” Sasha said.

  “Nonsense!” Aleka shouted, dismounting her snarling Hydra. She ran up to Sasha and searched him for the switch but found nothing. She screamed in fury. “Where is it?!”

  Just then, the lights of the field dimmed dramatically and a theatrical spotlight burst on, illuminating Adrienne, holding the Master Switch aloft at the crest of a hill.

  “Over there!” Niko cried. “The girl!”

  Aleka opened the notebook and with a few strokes of her pencil, Adrienne was encased in a cage, unable to escape.

  “Ha!” Aleka laughed. “That was easy! Did she think the Master Switch could best the Designer’s Notebook?”

  Aleka mounted the Hydra once more and she and her brother galloped away from the forest toward the hill and the trapped Adrienne.

  Adrienne focused her mind and flipped the switch again. Niko, Aleka, and the monsters were suddenly bathed in deep red pools of light. Niko scoffed.

  “She can make all the light shows she wants; the artifacts are still ours!”

  Adrienne smiled and made two Y shapes with her hands, palms up, and thrust them both downward at once: “NOW!”

  Aziz, across the field at a door labeled tool room, nodded. He swung the door open, revealing a portal to a shadowy cavern. With a great rumbling sound, thousands and thousands of orange-eyed, purple-furred, turquoise-tongued tool mice came flooding through the portal, into the field, and all over the mythical monsters and their pilots—a furry wave that stopped the beasts in their tracks, overwhelming them.

  Reo, Hunter, Beckett, and Jory emerged from their hiding place. They ran for Sasha at the edge of the forest and untied him from his bonds.

  “The artifacts!” Jory shouted. “Can you get them to bring us the artifacts?”

  Sasha nodded and pulled his whistle out from beneath his shirt. He raised it to his lips and blew a few sharp blasts, an elaborate code like sailors use to signal other ships. The Backstagers watched the scuffle as the tool mice scurried over the thrashing beasts and cowering siblings. After a few moments, a single mouse emerged from the scrum and raced toward Sasha with a notebook and pencil in its teeth and a stone microphone wrapped in its tail.

  “Atta boy, Friendo!” Sasha hollered.

  Friendo released the artifacts and leaped into Sasha’s arms, licking his face.

  Hunter grabbed the God Mic and as soon as he touched it, the wrestling Hydra and Cerberus vanished into smoke and the mic itself transformed with a flash of light into the form of a very modern microphone, just like the one Hunter used to communicate to the rest of the crew during tech. He turned it over in his hand. Something deep inside of him told him that he was meant to wield it.

  Adrienne flipped the Master Switch, and the red light that so excited the tool mi
ce faded and the sun of the Greenroom returned to normal. Sasha blasted his whistle and the tool mice dispersed, revealing Niko and Aleka, a bit scratched up and deeply shaken, but unharmed. The wave of mice ran back through the Tool Room door and Aziz slammed the door shut. The field was once again peaceful and quiet.

  Jory snatched up the notebook and pencil, flipped through the pages until he located Adrienne’s cage, and erased it, freeing her. She and Aziz ran down the hill to where the others had gathered and they all embraced. The Backstagers were a team again, and miraculously, they were all safe.

  Aleka staggered to her feet and looked on at the happy crew, three legendary artifacts in their possession. She screamed in rage and started sprinting toward them.

  Jory looked up from their group hug, saw her advancing, and opened the notebook to his original sketch of the Greenroom field. He set the eraser side of his pencil to the page and, with a slash, a great chasm of pure white blankness cut the field in half. Aleka stopped just at its edge, almost toppling into the nothingness below. Niko ran to her aid, pulling her back a safe distance from the edge.

  “What are you going to do?” Aleka shouted across the chasm. “Throw us into nothingness? Cage us here forever? It won’t matter, because Thiasos is bigger and more powerful than you can imagine. We know who you are now, we know where you live, and more will come after us. We’ll stop at nothing to make theater pure!”

  “I’m not going to do any of those things,” Jory said. “I’m going to send you home so you can tell all the others that the St. Genesius Backstagers have a different idea about what makes theater pure, and we’ll never fail to protect it.”

  He scribbled in the notebook and suddenly Niko and Aleka were strapped inside a rocket ship. Jory labeled the side TO ATHENS. The Thiasos siblings pounded on the windows of the rocket furiously as it took flight with a great plume of fire and shot high into the blue sky of the field and vanished from sight.

  The Backstagers all collapsed into the soft grass in a circle. Jory held out the Designer’s Notebook. Adrienne handed Sasha his Master Switch. Hunter extended the God Mic. They marveled at the legendary artifacts before them.