Chapter 8

Katherine begins to find a lot out about Hex Island. She discovers the message of the killer, decides to go for a huge hike, and finds another reason to beg her parents to leave.

My parents decided that I could use a week off from school. One day in to it and I was already begging to go back. Not that I really wanted to go to classes, but it felt wrong to leave Simon and Claire there with just themselves. Three was better than two. But Dad argued with me about calling the principal, putting in a formal complaint for my safety. My mother told me that the week off will do me good.

Cell phones didn’t work, and the only ones that did were handed out with a big signed form. One that my parents didn’t feel were necessary for me. The internet on my computer was really slow, and even though we weren’t supposed to cast any magic, I had tried speeding it up. In the new Hex Search website, a knock-off of Google, I looked up more information on the island. It told me the stuff I already knew. How it used to be an uncharted island, still kind of is, bought by a company called Hex. They were scientists who decided to hold some kind of living experiment with middle to low class citizens of the United States.

As I kept reading, someone had left a comment that was flagged, but I could still see it. In it, the user called GetOutNow wrote, “Hex uses convicts on the other side of the island as their other experiment. One had escaped and killed our son who had been playing in the woods. He was caught, but they just put him back in his cell. Get out while you can!”

I refreshed the page to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, maybe just spam. And as I suspected, it was gone.

If Hex really did have another experiment going on, than one of those convicts this person had talked about must have been in the school. What I couldn’t figure out is why he was in the school instead of going to one of the major labs. And not just that, but the guy had a Hex Driver. The letters I, K, N were the ones he managed out of bodies.

“Kate?” A voice said. It sounded like it came from my own Hex Driver. I turned towards it, staring at it. “Are you there… Katherine?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Claire.”

“How are you talking to me?”

“Hex Driver’s have a unique function. Like cell phones.” That explains why they only hand small government ones with a form. The kids get one at school. “The killer struck again. He formed an O, and next to it was a note for you. He said, to the girl who saw him, you’re my next letter.”

My body froze. Immediately, the shivers racing through my body created goosebumps along my arms and legs. “What?”

“Yeah, and it was written in the guy’s blood.”

“It was a guy this time?” The killer was changing his victims all of a sudden. I wrote down the next letter. O. Now there was I, K, N, O. I put them together and the only thing I could come up with was… I know. But what did this person know that was so important to terrorize a school filled with teenagers. And Claire told me if was on the other side of the hallway I saw him on, next to where I was standing. “Claire,” I whispered into the Hex Driver, “We need to find out what is in that large square of Hex Academy that he is writing over.”

“Simon already thought of that, but we can’t figure out a way.” There was some extra noise on her side of the conversation. It sounded like Simon was leaning down to talk to me through her Hex Driver, but then I heard other girls around Claire. “There aren’t any free blueprints in the library or offices. Simon checked the library and I snuck into the offices with the invisible spell.”

“I caught a comment on one of the Hex websites, something about another experiment on the other side of the island. After school, we should travel and see what it is.” It was very dangerous. The answers to everything could be over the hills.

“Deal. See you then.” A clicking sound, then Claire wasn’t there.

The clock said it was almost three in the afternoon, school got out in only twenty minutes. My parents got home at five. Quickly, I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote that I went to a friend’s house. After that, I grabbed a backpack and stuffed it with flashlights, granola bars, and a rope. I didn’t know what else to bring for this hike.

An hour later, I meant Claire and Simon near the edge of some woods that seemed to go on for a long stretch. It was leading away from the school and provided great coverage if someone wanted to sneak up to the school. Why hadn’t any of the members of the school board suggested taking them down? We moved about them quick but quietly. Simon was whispering ghost stories, trying to get a scare out of us girls. Claire gave him a swift smack to the back of the head and he stopped. Our hike must have taken a good two hours, six granola bars down, and our flashlights on for the past half hour.

“What is that?” said Simon, grabbing my arm and pulling me to the side.

Up ahead was a clearing in the woods, or maybe the end of them. Lights were coming through the trees, but it didn’t sound like a house. Big noises were pumping, steam shooting out of pipes. And when we got closer, we found out that it was a giant factory. And next to it was an even bigger building that stretched for a few miles.

Claire was on her Hex Driver, bringing up a holographic web search. This armband had it all. She was doing a geographic search for her location. The results made her close out of the browser and slowly creep back into the woods.

“Guys, get over here,” she said, clearly frightened.

“What is it, Claire?” Simon asked.

“Hex Factory and Hex Prison. This is where they make our Hex Drivers, right next to a giant prison that covers a chunk of the island. This must be the experiment the person was talking about. Why would you have a magic armband factory next to murderers?”

So the person whose comment was taking down was right after all. I wasn’t seeing things, was I? The proof was right in front of me. A part of me wanted to run back to my house, lock the doors and beg to my parents to go back to the states immediately. It didn’t work before, it probably wouldn’t now. The other part of me wanted to get into that factory and see how the Hex Driver was made. Something so mysterious, magical, and had everything clearly costed big money and couldn’t just be a normal factory if it brought this magic out of humans.

“What are you kids doing here?” A man’s voice sounded from behind us. I looked to my side and the figure leaped for Simon, knocking him out. He spun and whacked Claire to the ground and gave me a karate chop to the back of the neck.

My vision went dark, and I couldn’t see anything anymore.