The school was finally in sight after a painful climb of the final stretch of his marathon. It was 11 AM - right in the middle of a school hour. The corridors were going to be deserted, and entering class was going to be awkward.

    Marcus groaned and wheezed, his bag straps feeling like cast iron weights on his shoulders. He had to pass by his locker quickly and drop off some of his books if he wanted to survive this day.

    Marcus exhaled, wiping his sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his hoodie. Quickly entering his combination, he slouched forward to drop his bag in his locker, taking a moment to breathe.

    He swiftly opened the main pocket’s zipper-

    Clonk.

    “What just…?” He turned around. The noise seemed to have come from the janitor’s room next to his locker. Did a bucket fall off a rack or something? Probably nothing to worry about-

    Another noise rose up. A single noise again, but Marcus had no idea how to describe it correctly, other than the sloppy sludge of a car motor revving up while stuck in jello. He stood completely still and felt tense, while the noise slowly grew quieter. He looked at the door for a bit: it was painted the same grey as the wall, had a small frosted glass window, and a triangular, yellow sign, with a stick figure using a mop that indicated the room’s purpose.

    “Ooh, what are you looking at?” asked a voice behind him. Marcus turned around and instantly recognised the girl from yesterday, pushing her head towards him with a smile.

    “Ah, uh…” he tripped on his own words for a couple instants, “I-I was wondering about the… The door here.” He tentatively pointed to it with his thumb, before bringing it to his mouth to nervously nibble on his nail.

    “Oh!” She exclaimed, walking towards the door inquisitively, Marcus following just behind. She looked at it for a couple moments and reached for the handle.

    “What are you doing!?” Whispered Marcus in a panic, glancing back and forth between the two ends of the corridor - thankfully empty, besides them. 

    “Well what’s the point of wondering when you can just open it?” She spoke as if it was self-evident.

    “We’re not going to investigate that noise, we have to get to cla-” Marcus managed to speak out before being interrupted by the punk girl.

    “Oh, there was a noise too!? Well now we’ve definitely got to open this up.” She pulled the handle down and opened the door…

    But instead of facing a closet, all they found was a metallic stair leading down, tightly following a cement wall before turning a sharp angle to a barely visible floor. The only light in the room was downstairs, letting them spot a few tables with boxes on them through the handrails. The noise from earlier was barely audible again, accompanied by what sounded like someone thinking aloud to themself.

    “C’mon, let’s go see.” Said the girl, gesturing to Marcus to follow her as she started to walk down the stairs. He didn’t even have the time to properly grasp how bad of an idea his mind was telling him it was that he found himself following her reflexively.

    The room appeared to have been some sort of boiler room, reclaimed as a makeshift lab by a man in a lab coat. He didn’t seem to have heard them descend due to the gigantic noise-blocking headphones he was wearing. Despite being faced with the man’s back, Marcus instantly recognised the pretend-unkempt haircut adorning his head: it was his class’s physics teacher, Mr. Robert.

    Boxes were filled with unrecognizable apparatus, most of them looking broken down, and certainly all of them lacking batteries or being unplugged. Adorning the wall opposite to the stairs was a gigantic, circular-looking contraption out of which dozens of cables of various sizes and colors were plugged in - this machine was the source of the noise, that had shifted to a now more recognizable low rumble, akin to a washing machine.

    Marcus froze up out of confusion. Well, it didn’t feel like the situation warranted it, it was weird and he had a thousand questions about the logistics and legality of all this, but the room had an ominous air to it that he just plain didn’t like. He looked at his right to the punk girl -who’s name he still didn’t know, he realized. She was glancing around the room, taking in the sight with an air of curiosity and awe.

    Mr. Robert opened a panel on the central machine, revealing a beat up monitor and keyboard. In fact, now that Marcus was looking at it, he noticed how scrappy the whole thing looked - it wasn’t fragile by any means, but it was chaotically assembled from whatever must’ve been laying around.

    “Damn piece of crap autocorrection miscalculation…” muttered Mr. Robert, turning around... “Oh.” he plainly exclaimed, noticing the  teenagers. “Shouldn’t you two be in class?” he said, disinterestedly pointing in their general direction with the monkey wrench he had been holding.

    Mr. Robert was considered an eccentric by pretty much everyone in school, from the students to the professors, and even the administration. It was said the only reason he was employed here was due to a lack of local options. None of that had ever bothered Marcus, but that didn’t mean it didn’t traverse his mind whenever they met.

    Marcus stayed silent, searching for what exactly to say. He didn’t exactly have the time to do this, though, as the girl instantly spoke up. “Yeah yeah, we’ll be going. But what’s this place?” She asked. “And what’s this thing?” She pointed at the circular machine.

    “Look, kids.” Mr. Robert replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The principal does not want any student down there. I’d gladly show you around anyway, but not while you’re skipping hours.”

    “Sorry.” Marcus stammered out, avoiding his teacher’s glance by looking at the other student. She was checking the time on her phone.

    “So we’ll come back in… Twenty-six minutes, right? During the morning break?” She enquired.

    “If you want to, yeah, the lunch break would be fine too. Just make sure no one sees you enter.” Answered the teacher in his usual, mildly fatigued tone.

    “Sure. See ya later doc!” Replied the girl with enthusiasm, turning around and climbing the stairs. Marcus promptly followed her.

    The whole scene had felt… awkward to him. He went somewhere he wasn’t supposed to, got more questions than answers, and was basically forced into coming back without getting a say in the matter. But it wasn’t a bad thing somehow? He really wanted to know more now. ….Maybe it was for the best he hadn’t gotten an occasion to refuse Mr. Robert’s offer, in a kind of roundabout way.

    “Name’s Lucie by the way.” stated the punk girl as they got back in the corridor. “Yours?”

    “I’m, ah… Marcus. It’s a pretty bad name, I know.” He replied with the answer he gave everyone that asked.

    “How so?” She questioned, with a sudden air of concern.

    Marcus sighed. “I don’t… really know. I just never liked it.”

    “Well, why don’t you just get a new one?”

    “Wh…” He thought about it for a second. “Wow, I kinda never considered that.” He quickly wondered why exactly this sounded so normal, even though he’d barely just learned it was an option. “Did you do something similar when you were younger?” He asked.

    “Kinda had to.” Lucie replied nonchalantly. “Anyway, in twenty minutes or at lunch break?”

    He frowned. “I’ll need to take the break to catch back on my math and french classes of this morning, you know, learn what homework was given, make photocopies of a friend’s notebook and... And all that…”

    “Okay, okay, no need for your entire life story.” She teased. “I’ll see you at lunch break!” With a quick wave of the hand, she was off to her classes, going the direction opposite to where Marcus… To where he needed to go.

    Getting back to his locker, he dropped off his books and went to his own class.