It was strange, the way this kept drawinghim in. He felt continuously compelled to return to the box, as ifsome unseen force was pushing him along, encouraging him to see theanswers.

Once he was finished eating, he picked upthe backpack and placed it in his lap. He intended to reach insideand open the box so that he could take another look at the itemswithin, but as he reached for it, he caught sight of the carvedwords on one of the sides.

“Help,” “Come Together” and “Yesterday.”He’d almost forgotten. According to Brandy, these were all songs byThe Beatles. Maybe the items inside the box weren’t what he wassupposed to gain from Brandy’s visit. Maybe it was this small bitof knowledge. But what did it mean?

“Three songs,” he muttered to himself,hardly aware that he was speaking aloud. Not just three songs, butthree songs by the same group. That made it less likely to be acoincidence. If he’d been more into music, he might have made thisconnection as well, but he wasn’t very familiar with the music ofThe Beatles.

Songs. Singing. Music. He read the last lineto himself several times, the one that Brandy had notrecognized:

G N J

Albert stood up, slipped the backpack overhis shoulders and walked away from the table. He no longer noticedthe people around him. He threw away his garbage on his way out ofthe cafeteria and then climbed the stairs and left the buildingheading south across campus. The three song titles circled againand again through his thoughts. Music. Perhaps it was a long shot,but just maybe whoever carved those song titles into the box wasreferring to the university’s music building.

The music building was on the other side ofcampus, next to the field house. Albert made his way south on ThirdStreet, then west on Pole Street, which passed by the Cube. TheCube was four identical eight-story dormitories built together in asquare. This was the main dormitory on campus, where better thanhalf of all the resident students lived. He passed the Cube,crossed Redwood Avenue and then left Pole heading south on asidewalk that took him past the art building and the field house tothe music building.

Albert walked around to the front, taking inhis surroundings as he walked, and paused in front of the maindoors. There was a large sign over the door, proclaiming thebuilding as Juggers Hall. Until he arrived here, he hadn’t beenable to remember the name of the music building.

Juggers.

He stepped through the front doors and foundhimself in an empty lobby. His hunch was growing into somethingmore certain and he was able to find what he was looking forimmediately. On one of the walls, hanging over a row of chairs thatlooked soft and cozy, but probably weren’t, was a large portrait ofa balding, silver-haired gentleman in an expensive suit. He wore athick mustache and an air of kind authority. Beneath the portrait,on an engraved plate, was the name Dr. George Nicholas Juggers.

George Nicholas Juggers.

G. N. J.

He’d found it.

He sat down beneath George NicholasJuggers—his hunch about the coziness of the chairs was correct—andopened his backpack. “Help,” “Come Together” and “Yesterday” weresong titles, and the GNJ referred to this building. Albert turnedthe box in his hands. First Brandy. He’d shown the box to Brandyand when Brandy found the key, she brought it to him. Moreimportant than the key, however, was that she’d brought him theanswer to the second clue. Songs. He’d made the connection betweensong titles and music and followed his instincts to the musicbuilding, where he was rewarded with the third clue. Now he knewwhere to look. And what he was looking for were those last threelines. An I and a Z—or was it a one and a Z? The second linestill looked like a roman numeral seven, but there was no way ofknowing for sure. And the last line could’ve been anything.

He stood up and looked around the room.There were soda machines against the wall and an elevator machineroom in one corner, two tables and about a dozen of those falselycozy chairs, but there was nothing that appeared to match any ofthe markings on the box. He spent several minutes pacing around theroom, examining everything, but there was nothing there.

His first thought was that the songsnarrowed it down to the building and the initials narrowed it downto the room, but maybe the initials were just another part of theprevious clue. He set off down the hallway, peering into any roomsthat were open or that offered windows through which he could see.He took the stairs up to the second and then third floor and thentook the elevator down to the basement.

Nothing.

Eventually he found his way around to theback of the building and he stepped outside. Perhaps the next dayhe would tell Brandy what he’d found and she could help himdetermine what the last clues meant. Already the janitors who werevacuuming the carpets up on the third floor were beginning to givehim strange looks. He could hardly blame them. He was creepingaround like a thief looking for something to steal, cradling astrange wooden box in his arms. He’d be lucky if they didn’t callcampus security on him.

He was about to walk back into the buildingfor one last look around when something caught his eye.

No, that wasn’t right. It didn’t catch hiseye. It was as though something compelled him to turn andlook back, as though a soft voice had whispered from thatdirection, begging him to turn and see.

For a moment he didn’t see anything, justthe sidewalk, some trees, the billowing white smoke of the powerplant beyond, the darkening sky above. There was nothing out of theordinary, nothing he couldn’t see walking out of any otherbuilding. But then he saw it, right there in plain sight, yet wellhidden. He’d walked past so many of them. They were all overcampus. It was the panic button.

These big red buttons were attached tosix-foot posts all over campus and wired directly to the campussecurity headquarters in the administration building. In the eventof an emergency, one push of this button would bring the campuspolice rushing to this location.

There were dozens of these buttons oncampus, but no two were exactly identical. They each displayed adifferent number above the button, identifying the station. Thisparticular button was number twelve.

It wasn’t a Z at all. It was a number two. Aone and a two. Twelve.

Albert felt certain that this was the firstof the three clues on this final side of the box, but he feltneither excited nor proud to have found it. Instead, he suddenlyfelt very creepy. What made him turn and look at the panic buttonin the first place? It was as though something reached into hishead and made him see it.

No. That was preposterous. He simply saw itimmediately, registered it subconsciously and then reacted to it amoment later. That was all.

Still, something felt very weird. Perhaps itwasn’t right. He walked over to the button and examined it. Exceptfor the number twelve and the warning sign that hung beneath it,there was nothing. He turned and looked around him, convinced thatthis was the wrong solution after all. But then he found the secondclue staring down at him from the roof of Juggers Hall. A towerrose up from the center of the roof and a large clock-face staredback at him. On that clock face, directly between roman numeralssix and eight, was the second clue.

Albert stared up at the clock, unable tobelieve what he saw. What he did next he did almost withoutthinking. Standing in front of the number twelve panic button, hestared up at the clock and traced a straight line with his eyesfrom the center of the clock, past the seven and down to theground. There, set into the concrete was a large metal plate, anentrance to the tunnel that ran beneath the sidewalk.

He walked over to this metal covering andfound the final clue. Near one corner, a number was stamped intothe metal: