Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

asked.
    “Quentin,” Grandpa Smedry said, turning toward the small grad student. “What do you think?”
    “I really wouldn’t know,” Quentin said. “The legends are all so contradictory.”
    I started. “Hey! I understood him!”
    “That’s impossible,” Quentin said, still gathering Lenses off the ground. “I have my Talent on. I’m gibberish for the whole day.”
    “Actually, you’re not,” I said. “And you weren’t truly gibberish those other times either. Did you know that your Talent can predict the future?”
    Quentin’s jaw dropped. “You can understand me?”
    “That’s what I just said. Thanks for the hint about the rutabaga, by the way.”
    Quentin turned toward Grandpa Smedry, who was smiling. “No, Quentin,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I still can’t understand you.”
    I stood, shocked. What in the world…?
    Then I turned, rushing over to Sing’s gym bag, which lay on the side of the room. I unzipped it, digging through the ammunition to find a particular object: the book I’d swiped from the Forgotten Language room.
    I opened it up to the first page. The mechanics of forging a Truefinder’s Lens is complex, it read, but can be understood by one who takes the proper time to study.
    I looked up, staring over at Grandpa Smedry. The old man smiled. “There are a lot of different theories about what the Sands of Rashid do, lad. Your father, however, believed in a specific theory. Translator's Lenses, they were once called – they gave the power to read, or understand, any language, tongue, or code.”
    I looked back at the book.
    “Yes,” Grandpa Smedry said tiredly. Just wait until we show these to your father – if we can ever find him.”
    I spun. “So you do think he’s alive?”
    “Perhaps, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Perhaps. Now that we have those Lenses, perhaps we can find out for sure. I wish I’d had a way to discover sooner. If I’d known for certain whether he was dead or not, do you think I’d have let you get raised by foster parents?”
    I paused. Well, I guess the Lenses won’t help me when he makes no sense.
    I opened my mouth to demand more, but Bastille cut me off. “Trouble coming! Librarian – the blond one.”
    I rushed over to the corridor and saw Ms. Fletcher striding toward the room, a troop of at least fifty soldiers marching behind her. These men and women were armored with shiny breastplates. A few Alivened lumbered in the background.
    “Time to go, I think,” I said, pushing Bastille back. Then I slammed my hand into the ground.
    The floor just in front of me fell away, blocks tumbling down to the story below us. I backed away from the hole with Bastille.
    “Oh, very clever Alcatraz,” Ms. Fletcher said, stopping at the pit’s edge. “Now you’ve trapped yourself.”
    I smiled, raised an eyebrow, then pressed my hand against the back wall of the room. The bricks separated, mortar cracking. Sing came over and gave the wall a hefty push, topping the bricks into the next room.
    I winked at Ms. Fletcher, then reached down to slide a sword from the sheath of a fallen soldier. Ms. Fletcher stood with arms crossed, regarding Blackburn with a sour expression as I ducked out the broken wall after Sing, who was carrying Grandpa Smedry.
    “Quickly, now!” Grandpa Smedry said. “We’re late!”
    “For what?” I asked, running beside Sing and Quentin. Bastille, of course, ran ahead of us, watching for danger.
    “Why, for our dramatic exit, of course!” Grandpa Smedry said, sounding a bit tired. “Ms. Surly back there will try and cut us off at the front doors of the library.”
    “Well, I’ll just make us another door,” I said. “We’ll bust out the back wall.”
    “Ah, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Haven’t you realized? This entire building is inside a box of Expander’s Glass – just like the gas station. Expander’s Glass is very hard to break, even with a Talent. Besides, if you did, we’d be crushed as the entire library tried to burst out of the hole you’d made.”
    “Oh,” I said as we reached a stairwell. “Well, then, I have another idea.”
    “What?” Grandpa Smedry asked.
    I smiled, then reached into my pocket. I pulled out a small white rectangle: the library card we had taken off of the dungeon guard.

    The main lobby of the library was unusually busy for a weekday evening. People milled about, perusing stacks of books, completely unaware – of course – that everything they saw was filled