Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

the emotions, creating a creature that has just enough humanity to live, but not enough of it to really function.”
    I accepted the scrap of paper. I could read the text – it appeared to be prose. The title line at the top right corner read The passionate fire of Fiery Passion.
    “You can make an Alivened out of virtually anything,” Sing said. “But substances that soak up emotion tend to work the best. That’s why a lot of Dark Oculators prefer bad romance novels, since the object used determines the Alivened’s temperament.
    “Romance novels make an Alivened very violent,” Bastille said. “But rather dense in the intelligence department.”
    “Go figure,” I said, dropping the scrap of paper. They give up their own humanity…. And this was the monster that had my grandfather held captive. “Come on,” I said, standing. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”
    “And this thing?” Sing asked.
    I paused. The Alivened looked up at me, its paper face somehow managing to convey a look of confusion.
    I… broke it somehow, I thought. I thought I’d killed it – but that’s not the way my Talent works. I don’t destroy, not when the Talent is in full form. I just break and transform. “Leave it,” I said.
    Sing looked up in surprise.
    “We don’t want any more gunshots,” I said. “Come on.”
    Sing shrugged, rising. Bastille moved down the hallway, checking the intersection. I quickly swapped my Oculator’s Lenses for my Tracker’s Lenses – fortunately, my grandfather’s footprints were still glowing.
    I didn’t think I knew him that well, I thought.
    I met Bastille at the intersection, pointing to the right branch. “Grandpa Smedry went that way.”
    “The same way the Librarians went,” she said. “After they discovered us.”
    I nodded, glancing in the other direction. I pointed. “I see Ms. Fletcher’s footprints that way.”
    “She turned away from the others?”
    “No,” I said. “She didn’t go with Grandpa Smedry from the dungeons. Those footprints I can see now are the original ones we followed – the ones that led us to the place where we got captured. I told you we were close to where we started.”
    Bastille frowned. “How well do you know this Ms. Fletcher?”
    I shrugged.
    “It’s been hours,” Bastille said. “I’m surprised her footprints are still flowing.”
    I nodded. As I did, I noticed something else odd.
    (If you haven’t noticed, this is the chapter for noticing weird things. A opposed to the other chapters, in which only normal things were ever noticed. There is a story I could tell about that, but as it involves eggbeaters, it not appropriate for young people.)
    The normalcy-challenged thing that I had noticed was actually not all that odd, all things considered. It was a lantern holder – the ornate bracket that I’d ripped free when I’d thrown the lantern at the Alivened.
    There was nothing all that unusual about this lantern bracket, except for the already-noted fact that it was shaped like a cantaloupe. For all I knew, cantaloupe-shaped library lanterns were quite normal. Yet the sight of this one sparked a memory in my head. Cantaloupe, fluttering paper makes a duck.
    I glanced back at the hallway behind me, with its broken wall, more broken floor, and piles of paper that shuffled in the draft.
    It’s probably nothing, I thought.
    You, of course, know better that that.

Chapter 16
    If you are anything like me – clever, fond of goat cheese, and devilishly handsome – then you have undoubtedly read many books. And, while reading those books, you likely have thought that you are smarter than the characters in those books.
    You’re just imagining things.
    Now, I’ve already spoken about foreshadowing (a meddling literary convention of which Heisenberg would uncertainly be proud). However, there are other reasons why you only think that you’re smarter than the characters in this book. First off, you are likely sitting somewhere safe as you read the story. Whether it be a classroom, your bedroom, your aquarium, or even a library (but we won’t get into that right now…), you have no need to worry about Alivened monsters, armed soldiers, or straw-fearing Gaks. Therefore, you can examine the events with a calm, unbiased eye. In such a state of mind, it is easy to find faults.
    Secondly, you have the convenience of holding this story in book form. It is a complete narrative, which you can look through at your leisure. You can go