Annoyed, disappointed, or confused, the Adventurers' Group went back inside the school grounds. Once they reached the second floor, Cat snapped her fingers. The replica of the place in the Dimension was exact, so no change could be perceived.
"Then... what are we doing here?" Rose asked.
"We need to infiltrate the administrative office to look for Sarah's file," Hugo explained.
"Oookay... But... I thought you were going to play. I don't understand."
"Well, it's a little difficult to explain. So just follow us, and if we need your help, think of yourself as Healer."
"In very simple terms..." Tomás began explaining the Dimension and the danger Sarah was in to her. Meanwhile, the rest of the team approached Cat.
"Why are we on the second floor? The administrative office is on the first," Hugo asked.
"I know. The entrance is near the second-floor bathroom, and the teachers' lounge is underneath the music room," she said, leading the group straight to that room.
Inside, the replica remained exact. Every instrument was there, along with every table and chair. Cat approached the piano.
"Stand there, in the corner of the piano, and walk two steps to the right," she ordered Hugo. "Good. You'll be our scout. We're going to test two things. First, I need you to memorize this room. Then, when you return to the real world, confirm the piano's position and communicate with me telepathically."
"Telepathically? How?"
"I don't know. I haven't tried it. But Rini says we can do it if someone waits for the message in the Dimension. It's something to do with the bond we have with Sarah and with each other."
"That doesn't clarify anything. How the hell am I supposed to—?"
Hugo was no longer in the music room, at least not the music room where he had been a second before, with the lights on and the rest of his friends surrounding him. In this music room, there was nothing but darkness and solitude.
He turned around and found the piano in exactly the same position as the one in the Dimension.
Now he only needed to communicate something to Cat with his mind.
He laughed at himself for a second. If he stopped to think about it, the situation he was in made absolutely no sense. But perhaps that was precisely why talking through telepathy wasn't such a stupid idea. He concentrated and imagined telling Cat the first word that came to mind.
"Chalupa? Seriously?" Cat asked as she reappeared in front of him.
"I don't know, it's a funny word, and I figured it would be an excellent way to break in this new means of communication," Hugo excused himself with a grin. "Oh! And the piano is in exactly the same place."
"Very good. Now the real test. You're going downstairs. You should appear inside a coat closet in the teachers' lounge. Let me know once you make sure that's the case. Either way, I'll wait ten seconds and bring you back whether you confirm it or not. Okay?"
"So he's supposed to be going into the real school while..." Hugo heard Rose talking to Tomás just as the floor opened beneath his feet and he fell into a dark place on the floor below. Suddenly, the opening he had left in the ceiling disappeared.
He couldn't see anything, but he could feel garments of different textures surrounding him, all coats. On the other side of what had to be the closet door, he could hear voices talking casually.
Just as Hugo reached out to open the door slightly and confirm that he was in the teachers' lounge, his young English teacher opened the door wide, looking to the side as she said goodbye to another teacher.
"CHALUPA! CHALUPA!" Hugo thought, almost shouting it aloud.
But he didn't disappear in time. When the teacher turned around to retrieve her bag, she found herself face-to-face with Hugo. She screamed in fright and slammed the door shut.
"What happened, Madeline?" another voice asked.
"I... I think... There's a student..."
The voice was interrupted by silence, and the light from the floor above once again flooded into the closet through the hole he had fallen through seconds earlier.
"They saw me!" Hugo shouted. "I did appear in the closet, but Professor Madeline saw me! You were supposed to bring me back faster! I asked you to do it right before they saw me!"
"What you said was chalupa. How was I supposed to know that meant you wanted me to bring you back? Besides, you don't have to shout for me to hear you," Cat said as the floor opened beneath the piano, revealing a staircase that allowed the group to head downstairs.
"Well, now chalupa will be our code for 'get me out of here,' okay?" Hugo clarified as he left the closet and rejoined the team.
"You know you don't need codes? Well, whatever... Now we know we're in the teachers' lounge."
The replica of that floor was nowhere near as perfect as the rest of the school they had explored in the Dimension. Here, there was the door, the coat closet, other cabinets, and a large table in the middle, but not a single detail more.
"I was already having trouble with English. Now imagine the teacher thinks she saw me appear in the closet."
"She already has enough to deal with in class because of your pointless questions," Mica replied. "I'm sure she'll think she saw you because of some kind of post-traumatic stress."
Rose laughed at the comment and raised her hand in front of Cat to speak.
"I want to do it now. Can I be the next scout?"
Cat avoided her gaze without answering and walked toward the door at the back.
"From here on, it's unexplored territory, so I'll need someone in the real school in real time to guide us. But first, I need to make sure the door is here. I don't know what could happen if we go to the other side, send you into the real world, and there's a wall there."
The group exchanged nervous glances for the first time during the expedition.
"All right, Hugo. Stand in front of the door and..."
"Wouldn't it be better for Rose to do it?" he asked while obeying anyway. "They don't know her, and she's eager to help us. So I think that..."
"Are you sure, Madeline? Couldn't it have been stress?" the physical education teacher asked the English teacher, who was still standing in front of the coat closet on the other side of the room. "Hugo Rodríguez is somewhat... singular, but I can't imagine him hiding in the closet to play a prank on you or..."
Realizing that he was back in the real world, Hugo turned around to make sure the door was in the right place, but it wasn't. The door was about four steps farther to the left.
He moved slowly so as not to alert the teachers arguing behind him, praying that they were the only ones in the room. He took the four steps to position himself in front of the real door and began thinking of the secret code when it opened and knocked him to the floor.
"Oh, young man, I'm sorry," exclaimed an elderly woman, short and wearing enormous round glasses. The school principal. "I didn't think that... Wait a moment. You shouldn't be here!"
Suddenly, Hugo was back with his friends, but still on the floor and in front of a piece of wall.
"Well... Good new: the door is right here, directly in front of me," Hugo said, getting back up. "Bad new. No, not bad. Terrible new: The English teacher recognized me, and the principal crashed into me. I think my school life is over."
"I should have gone..." Rose pouted.
"Don't worry, Hugo. They won't have any way of proving it was you."
"Then what? Will they say there's a ghost at school that looks exactly like Hugo Rodríguez?"
"I think this is getting a little out of hand, don't you?" Mica argued. "Yes, we'll find Sarah's address, but what happens afterward if they somehow manage to prove that we were sneaking into the administrative office? Even if they don't, appearances like the ones Hugo just made are going to cause people to talk, and..."
"Relax, genius. I'll take care of it from here," Jacob interrupted.
"Yes," Cat confirmed. "Now that we've made it this far, Jacob can be the one to guide us from the real world."
"Then someone else can go into the real world to get the file once we find the archives. Tomás, or maybe Rose," Jacob continued. "You and Hugo won't have to take any more risks if you don't want to."
"I'm going with you," Mica said defiantly.
"Hey, man, this isn't the time to play the serious guy. Didn't you just say all this was making you nervous, and now you want to be part of the riskiest step of the operation?"
"Yes, Mica. I think Jacob can..."
"No, I'm going with him," Mica exclaimed.
"How brave, you two," Rose interrupted. "I'm jealous. I wish I could go too. What do you think, Cat?"
"That three is too many," Cat replied seriously. "Okay, Jacob, Mica, go into the hallway." The door moved on its own to position itself in front of Hugo. "And Mica, please... Don't ruin it."
Mica was about to protest, but everyone disappeared. Now he found himself in a hallway with a door in front of him, voices of three nervous persons arguing coming from behind it.
"Move, or do you want them to catch you?" Jacob asked, pointing down the hallway.
He moved ahead to a crossroads farther on, counting the steps before whispering the number and communicating it to Cat telepathically.
Mica moved forward and found a hallway with three doors on one side and two on the other. In the center was a plaque with the school's logo, a picture of the teachers, and other information he couldn't make out.
The sounds of different conversations could be heard ahead.
"All right, now we find the door," Jacob said quietly.
Mica nodded and began walking to open the first door, but then realized that they had plaques identifying the rooms. He pointed them out to Jacob and began reading them as they moved forward, counting their steps.
The first door led to the bathrooms; music could be heard inside. The second door was the technology area, which surprised Mica because he hadn't known a school had one. The first on the other side was accounting, and the second was archives.
Mica pointed to the plaque, and Jacob finally reached it. The problem: two people were talking inside.
"Eighteen steps, but there are people inside. Wait for my signal," Jacob murmured to Cat.
"And now?" Mica asked.
"Simple. We get the people out of there and that's it."
"How? We can't do that without being discovered."
"And what's so bad about being discovered? You're the one who overthinks everything. Hide in there," he ordered, pointing toward the technology office.
Mica grumbled but did as he was told. Inside, he found three computer stations and a tower that had to be a server in the darkness. He left the door slightly ajar to see what Jacob would do.
Jacob, for his part, simply knocked on the archive door a couple of times. Within seconds, it opened to reveal a tall teacher with a bored expression.
"Yes?" she asked, annoyed. "Excuse me, students aren't allowed in here, who..." she began automatically, only to stop when she realized she was indeed speaking to a student.
Jacob interrupted her before she could begin accusing him.
"The principal is having a crisis in the teachers' lounge! They asked me to come and tell you!"
"Mildred? A crisis?" The teacher rushed into the hallway, but she was the only one who left.
Jacob entered the archive office, and Mica heard him repeat the excuse to someone else inside.
"Yes, I heard you, boy," a male voice replied. "Belén can take care of that. I have a lot of work to do here."
"But... The principal said she needed all of you there, immediately."
"Didn't you say she was having a crisis? How did she ask you for something like that?"
"A nervous breakdown! Or something. Maybe I'm exaggerating. But she was yelling that she wanted all the teachers in the teachers' lounge, right now."
"And why did she send a student to tell us? I'm sorry, son, but what you're saying doesn't make sense."
"Fine, do whatever you want, but don't say I didn't warn you," Jacob concluded and left the office.
The man snorted behind him and hurried to follow.
"All right, all right. Everyone knows Mildred is that weird," the old man snorted again, whom Mica could now see. "But you're coming with me, young man. You shouldn't be here in the first place."
"Uh... all right. I'll be right behind you, sir."
Mica stepped out after Jacob passed through the door and gave him a signal. He quickly headed to the archives and informed Cat.
"We're on top of the archives now," Cat told the group, which was in a space of absolute darkness that was gradually taking the shape of a school hallway step by step. "Okay, Hugo, Tomás, it's your turn. I need you to go down there and help Jacob and Mica look for the file."
"And me?" Rose asked.
"You have nothing to do with this," Cat replied curtly.
Rose didn't answer.
Hugo positioned himself exactly where Cat indicated, and Tomás hurried to do the same. Once both gave the go-ahead, the floor opened beneath them and they fell.
And fell, and fell, and fell.
"Don't you think we're much higher up than we should be?" Hugo asked Tomás. Even the light from the opening was no longer visible.
"Could they have made a mistake? Could it be that...?" Tomás began theorizing, and Hugo finished:
"Could we have fallen out of the world? Like when video games glitch."
"Or we're trapped inside a wall!"
Panic began to overtake them, but just a couple of seconds later, they slowed down and gently touched the ground.
Around them was not the archive, but a grotesque and horrifying torture chamber.