Ghast in the Machine! (Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles #4)

by Nick Eliopulos

  While Harper smelted the ore, Ash looked around with a torch. It provided much more light than the portals, and almost immediately she noticed something in the shadows.

  “What is that?” Ash said.

  Po turned to see a small structure made of wood. It looked completely out of place in the stone cavern.

  It also looked strangely familiar.

  “Is that our bat house?” Po asked. “The one we built on the school lawn?”

  “Why in the world would anyone build this?” Harper asked. “And why here?”

  Squeaking sounds came from the surrounding darkness. “Well, chances are good that there are a lot of bats in the area,” Morgan said.

  “Let’s not stick around to meet them,” Jodi said.

  “When the animal lover wants to flee from animals, you listen,” said Po. He jerked his head in the opposite direction of the squeaking. “Let’s get out of here!”

  After another brief detour through the Nether, they emerged near the peak of a snow-capped mountain. They were so high that Po couldn’t make out any details on the ground below. There were more mountains stretching into the distance, a whole range of them.

  And looming above them, built against the very top of the mountain, was a house. It was large, wedged between two peaks. To reach the main entrance, they would have to ascend a winding wooden staircase. Not that Po was eager to go inside. It looked haunted.

  “Well, that’s an original design, at least,” he said.

  Morgan shook his head. “It’s not. It’s a woodland mansion. They generate naturally. But never in mountains.”

  “Another example of the Evoker King bending the rules more than breaking them,” said Ash.

  “He doesn’t seem to create much original stuff, does he?” said Jodi.

  “I don’t see any more portals around,” said Harper. “And evokers—real evokers—spawn in woodland mansions, don’t they? I wonder…”

  “This is his base,” said Morgan, getting a flash of inspiration. “His home. It has to be!”

  He took a step forward.

  “Hold up,” said Po, cautioning his friend. “We’ve been in here a long time.”

  “We don’t know what’s in there,” said Ash. “We need to prepare.”

  “We need potions,” said Harper. “And cooked food.”

  Morgan sighed, but he didn’t argue.

  “For the record, I’d totally storm the castle with you,” said Jodi, giving her brother a smirk. “But I have been known to rush in without thinking.”

  “Aw, the siblings do have a lot in common, don’t they?” said Po, wiping away a fake tear.

  “We’ll storm it tomorrow,” Ash promised the group.

  “Together,” Morgan said, giving his sister a look. Jodi smiled back at him.

  The next morning, Jodi’s mind was racing faster than Baron Sweetcheeks on his hamster wheel. She sat drinking her milk on her favorite bench while her friends discussed what they’d seen the day before.

  “The Evoker King has to be a student,” said Ash. “I’d say we have proof now.”

  “I agree.” Harper nodded. “No one else would be able to build replicas of the school and the bat house.”

  “Right,” said Po. “It must be a student. Or maybe a teacher…”

  “I’ll bet it’s that kid Theo,” Morgan said. “He basically swore vengeance against us after that coral jewelry incident.”

  “But that was after the Evoker King started messing with us,” Ash pointed out. “And after the sixth VR headset went missing.”

  “And I really think Theo means well,” said Harper. “He just went about things the wrong way.”

  “I’m just saying some of the teachers at this school could be secretly evil!” said Po, tapping his fingertips together like the villain in a cheesy sci-fi movie. “It’s worth considering!”

  Sitting in silence, Jodi had suspicions of her own. Her unspoken suspicions weighed heavily on her heart. But she had to pursue them.

  She put on her large, lucky fedora. She flipped up the collar on her jacket. She pulled her spy journal from her backpack.

  She slipped away while her friends continued their debate. They didn’t even see her leave.

  * * *

  Her first stop was the front office. She greeted the principal’s assistant, Mr. Mellohi, and he smiled warmly in return. “What can I do for you, Jodi?” he asked. Jodi was always impressed that he knew the name of every kid at Woodsword. And she especially liked that he didn’t care about the school’s policy against wearing hats.

  “My brother, Morgan, misplaced his science textbook,” she said. “I’m trying to help him find it. You know, retracing his steps? Could you tell me what room he was in for detention yesterday?”

  The man chuckled. “Morgan? In detention?” He shook his head. “Your brother isn’t much of a rule breaker. But I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jodi said, frowning. “Sometimes people surprise you.”

  * * *

  The unwelcome surprises kept turning up as Jodi followed the clues. A group of Ash’s fellow Wildling Scouts told her there hadn’t been a troop meeting since the weekend. Po’s teammate Ricky told her basketball practice had been canceled because the schoolwide glitch had made it impossible to lower the automated hoops from the ceiling. She called Harper’s phone and got an error message. If Harper had gone with her mom to have the phone fixed, the errand hadn’t been successful.

  And Harper had joined them in Minecraft after she’d left school for that errand. Why would she come back so long after the final bell?

  It didn’t add up.

  Or it did add up, and Jodi just didn’t like the answer.

  She wrote her findings in her spy notebook.

  “Jodi? Is anything wrong?”

  She hadn’t realized she’d been sitting still and staring hard at her notebook. Ms. Minerva’s voice brought her back to her surroundings. The teacher was wheeling the chalkboard down the hallway while holding a steaming mug of coffee.

  “Why don’t you help me with this and tell me what’s on your mind?” the teacher suggested.

  Jodi pushed against the chalkboard. It rolled easily along the linoleum floor. Ms. Minerva nodded gratefully to her as she took a drink of her coffee. “Oh, sweet ambrosia,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment and savoring the hot drink. Then, as they walked along the hallway, she prompted Jodi to start talking. “Well?”

  Jodi sighed. “I think my friends are hiding something from me. They keep telling me they have things to do, but their stories don’t add up.”

  “What would they be hiding?” asked the teacher.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Jodi said. But a pang of worry in her gut told her she had a theory. “Maybe…maybe they just don’t want to hang out with me so much. They’re making excuses to avoid me.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t sound like them, does it?” asked Ms. Minerva. “Why would they do such a thing?”

  Jodi shrugged. “I guess occasionally I can be impulsive. I know it bothers Morgan sometimes. Maybe the others agree with him.”

  “Have you actually spoken to Morgan about this?”

  Jodi shook her head.

  “Maybe you should,” said Ms. Minerva. “You have a wonderful imagination, Jodi. But sometimes our imaginations can work against us. We can often imagine problems that aren’t really there.”

  “Maybe…”

  “Well, think about it,” said the teacher. “Honestly, I wish I could fix every problem you kids encounter. But that’s not really my job as a teacher. My job is to give you the tools to solve your own problems.”

  “Speaking of problems…,” Jodi said. She grinned. “How much longer are we going to be using this old thing?” She rapped her knu
ckles against the chalkboard.

  “Not a fan of the dust?” Ms. Minerva nodded. “Me neither. But there’s good news. Doc has traced the root of the problem to the school’s security cameras. An error in the software or something like that. She should have it fixed soon.”

  They reached the classroom. Jodi knew her brother and her friends would be inside. She tried to act like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  But Jodi was troubled. Because she knew they had lied. And if that wasn’t because they were avoiding her…

  Then it was because one of them was the Evoker King!

  She was sure of it.

  Jodi had a hard time keeping her theories to herself throughout the morning. She wanted her suspicions to be wrong. But how was she to know for sure?

  It was nearly lunchtime before she had a realization. It struck her like a bolt from the blue. Something Ms. Minerva had said suddenly echoed through her mind. Not the pep talk…

  The security cameras. The school had security cameras.

  She would be able to see for herself who had taken that sixth headset. And that person must be the Evoker King.

  Jodi quivered with excitement. As soon as the bell rang for lunch, she jumped up from her desk.

  Morgan started to say, “I can’t go to lun—”

  “Gottadosomestuffbye!” she shouted at Morgan on her way past him and out the door.

  She knew better than to run through the halls. Student hall monitors loved to exercise their meager authority by calling out runners. So she walked briskly until she’d made it to Doc’s classroom. She caught the science teacher just as she was heading out for her lunch break.

  “Doc!” she cried. “I need to know more about the school’s security cameras!”

  Doc chuckled. “Well, Madam Curie’s well-balanced breakfast! I do love to see a student so eager to learn!”

  Jodi huffed, out of breath. Unable to find her voice, she gave Doc a thumbs-up.

  “As a matter of fact,” Doc said, “I was just on my way to the security hub. I’m trying to fix an issue with the camera software. I’ll give you a tour!”

  Doc pointed out every camera they passed on the way to the hub. The cameras were spaced every few yards along the hallway, higher than even an adult could reach.

  “You must be able to see the whole school,” Jodi said.

  “Just about,” Doc said. “There are a few blind spots here and there. Part of the gym, for instance. And of course, there aren’t any cameras in the closets or bathrooms.”

  The hub was a small room connected to the main office. Jodi marveled at the sight of an entire wall of television screens. They showed various locations throughout the school.

  “I made two mistakes that led to the school’s technical problems,” Doc said. She slid the metal casing off a computer and started poking around in the computer’s guts. “The first mistake was networking all the technology. That’s what allowed the glitch to spread and affect everything. The second mistake was using an old government AI program to run the cameras.”

  “AI?” Jodi said, her ears pricking up. “As in artificial intelligence? The cameras are alive?”

  Doc shook her head, chortling. “Oh, no. Not at all. It’s a very limited AI. It can’t think creatively. It can make some basic decisions, but mostly it’s just meant to follow instructions.” She pulled her hand from the computer to scratch her head. “Although some of those instructions have clearly gotten confused.”

  Jodi remembered why she was there. She needed to see footage from the day that headset went missing. “Can I see footage from a particular day? It was a little more than a month ago.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t save the footage for that long,” Doc said. “With all these cameras? That would be way too much data for these old machines.”

  Jodi’s heart sank. So much for that plan.

  And then she looked up at one of the screens. And her heart sank even further.

  Morgan, Po, Ash, and Harper were there. Instead of eating lunch in the cafeteria, they were heading toward a supply closet. What in the world could they be up to?

  Maybe they were all the Evoker King! Was the headset in that closet?

  Jodi remembered what Doc had said about the closets. There was no way to see inside it. Not from here.

  “Doc, I have to go,” Jodi said. “Thanks so much for the tour.”

  “Any time,” said Doc, and then she yelped as a circuit board sparked. “But yes, it’s probably best if I focus right now.”

  * * *

  Jodi sped toward her friends. She could see the door to the supply closet was ajar. She could hear them whispering on the other side.

  She didn’t want it to be true. But she had to know for sure.

  She threw the door open, shouting, “I’ve caught you red-handed!”

  She might have said more. But what she saw took her breath away.

  It was a llama.

  A giant llama. In the closet. Standing next to her brother.

  “Okay, that…is not what I expected,” Jodi said.

  “Jodi?” squealed Morgan. “What are you—? You shouldn’t—”

  “Happy birthday!?” Po said with enthusiasm and confusion. He and Harper were holding a half-decorated banner that said those same words. He added meekly, “A little early.”

  “You got me a llama?!” Jodi shouted.

  But the llama’s head popped off, revealing Ash, who smiled bashfully. “A llama costume, anyway,” she said.

  “It’s just like a Minecraft skin,” said Po. “But for real life.”

  “And it is so, so soft,” Jodi said, petting the arm.

  “I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” Morgan said. “Or the llama is. We wanted to do something nice for your birthday.”

  Jodi slapped her forehead. “Right. It’s my birthday. Next week. Oh, brother.” She slapped her forehead twice more. “I ruined my own birthday surprise.”

  “I told you she was suspicious,” Ash said to Morgan. Morgan nodded in agreement.

  Po grinned. “Should have known better than to try to keep a secret from spymaster Jodi.”

  “I didn’t think you’d ever find this closet, though,” Harper said. “Even the Evoker King left it out of his model school.”

  Everyone chuckled for a moment. But then Jodi’s mouth dropped open. She reeled, and the room seemed to spin. And it was like the others could sense it, too. They watched Jodi as information started clicking into place in her brain.

  There were no cameras in the closets. There were no cameras in the bathrooms. There were no cameras in the gym.

  The Evoker King had built a model of their school. That model was realistic in every way. Except for the closets. And the bathrooms. And the gym.

  “The Evoker King doesn’t go to this school,” Jodi said, her mind racing to catch up with the theory that was forming.

  “Uh, what?” said Po.

  “He doesn’t know what the school actually looks like. He only knows what he’s seen…”

  She stepped out of the closet. She looked up near the ceiling.

  “…through the cameras,” she finished. “He can see this place through the cameras!!!”

  “We should tell someone,” Harper said. “We should tell Doc. Or Ms. Minerva.”

  “We will,” promised Morgan. “We just need a little more information first.”

  “You think we’ll find answers in that mansion,” said Ash.

  “I hope so,” Morgan said, and he slipped on his pair of VR goggles.

  In moments, they were standing on the mountain, in the shadow of the mansion. The sun was setting, and Morgan thought the building looked even more haunted than before.

  “Let’s do it,” said Po. “Before I lose my nerve.”

&nb
sp; The interior of the mansion, at least, was just as Morgan expected it to look. They entered a grand foyer, a large room with several doors and a big stone staircase leading up.

  “Which way?” Jodi asked.

  Morgan and Ash both shrugged. “The inside of a mansion is random,” Ash explained. “No two are alike.”

  “Just like snowflakes!” Po said. “Like horrible, creepy, and possibily haunted snowflakes.”

  “I hate to do anything at random,” Harper said. “But it seems there’s no other way to explore this place.”

  “We should leave a trail of seeds,” Morgan said. “So we can find our way back here.” He smiled at Jodi. “I learned that trick from my brilliant sister.”

  “Aw, shucks,” said Jodi.

  Behind the first door, they found a room that was empty except for five potted flowers. They took a vote and decided to leave the flowers—and everything else they found—untouched.

  The next room was all dark oak and cobblestone, and held a solitary jack-o’-lantern. Morgan didn’t like the way the pumpkin seemed to leer at them.

  The third room was filled floor to ceiling with blue wool of various shades.

  “Upstairs it is, then,” said Po.

  Upstairs was a maze of connected rooms, most of them dank and gloomy. All that dark wood made the place feel cramped and old. They passed through libraries, and dining halls, and bedrooms. When they entered a room filled with cobwebs, Morgan readied himself for a fight. But nothing stirred from the corners.