Free Worldweavers: Spellspam by Alma Alexander

me,” the principal said, flicking on a light switch on the inside wall of the hidden passage, revealing a set of spiraling stairs leading toward a faint glow that came from somewhere out of sight down below.
    Terry went first, followed by Tess, then Thea, and then Magpie, with Mrs. Chen bringing upthe rear, still mumbling about how all of this was a bad idea.
    It didn’t look like much at first sight. The Nexus apparently consisted of little else besides a couple of large monitors on a rather ordinary wooden desk, which also held a headphone set, a keyboard, and a trackball mouse. The monitors were switched off. Everything was dark, except for a single red pilot light on each monitor and a faint opalescent glow coming out of walls that looked half-translucent, barely solid enough to mute a bright light blazing underneath.
    “Like an iceberg,” the principal said. “You only see the essentials, the things above the waterline. The Nexus is in the walls, in the ceiling, all around you.”
    “Wow,” breathed Terry, the only one who knew enough to be impressed.
    “It’s been switched off for days,” the principal said. “We need this thing back online. Terry, do you think you’re up to this?”
    “I can do it, sir,” Terry said.
    The principal exchanged glances with Mrs. Chen, who stepped back, crossing her arms in front of her in an eloquent gesture of disapproval.
    The principal sighed deeply. “The switch on the left monitor. That’s the master. It’ll turn the whole system on.”
    Terry reached for the switch, and the principal closed his eyes. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, and then a series of seemingly less-than-extraordinary things occurred. A familiar hum of a computer, albeit deeper and more resonant than what anybody there was used to, filled the room; first one monitor and then the other woke out of a deep slumber and began going through power-up screens. Then the first monitor blinked, resolved into a complicated array of icons and menu bars; the second one opened several different windows, some showing complex and moving graphs as though on a hospital monitor, others with actual images, or indicating that they were a visual representation of audio or other kinds of signals.
    Then the apparently featureless wall suddenly split open to reveal a hidden panel—more monitors, a luminous keypad, what looked like a built-in speaker.
    “I’ll show you the ropes,” the principal said, watching Terry’s eyes flick rapidly from one thing to another. “All of these things have meaning,and even a few days’ shutdown will have caused a fair amount of chaos—it seems particularly unfair to fling you into that when such turmoil is brewing out there. But I didn’t have a choice—I did not know enough about keeping this safe, how to protect it. I only hope I didn’t do more harm than good.”
    “How essential is the Terranet connection?” Terry said. “Perhaps we can see what else needs to be done first, before we…”
    “Terry,” the principal said gently, “this is a gateway. You’re already on the ’net, just by virtue of being powered up. We have good filters, but at least one…well, but we aren’t in the safe place yet, so let us not speak of that in those terms. But one of the first things that you will have to do is check on the filters, protect the gateway, screen out malicious mail.”
    “Then it looks like I have a lot to do,” Terry said, folding himself into the computer chair before the desk and reaching for the keyboard. “Thea, you’d better show me what you did upstairs. I might as well start dealing with things…from… otherwhere .”
    Thea stepped up to the desk. Tess, chewing her lip, trailed in her wake. Magpie hung back,standing beside Mrs. Chen, her hand folded tightly around her own dreamcatcher as though it were a talisman against everything. Magpie saw one of Mrs. Chen’s hands clench tightly as Thea leaned over Terry’s shoulder to type something and he,