A few minutes later, I come upon the lake. Not far from the water sits a yellow umbrella with its nose stuck in the dirt. A clue…

Kneeling next to it, I roll the heavy key between my fingers while I think. A key. In a burst of heat, the answer inserts itself in my brain. The parchment contains a keyed Vigenère cipher, a series of Caesar Ciphers also known as a Quagmire III, and I’ll need a key and a passcode to translate it.

I trace the direction the umbrella handle points. Still as glass, the lake reflects the Crest Mountains from this angle, and a lone tree with two upside-down triangles drawn on in chalk on its trunk. Two triangles mean “viewpoint” ahead… It’s all I need to see. Armed with this knowledge, I deduce that my alphabet key has something to do with “crest” or “mountain” and my passcode pertains to “view”.

Knowing that with this information a computer could easily unscramble the letters, I long for an app to do the work for me, but part of the test is doing it the old-fashioned way. It will require a journey to the Crypt. Finding the nearest zip line, I sail to the Vault.

The trapdoor is open when I arrive, and I scramble down the mossy stairs. Reaching the bottom, I run through the labyrinth, stifling the urge to disappear down unexplored corridors and find what treasures await. I make two sharp lefts before arriving outside the Crypt. Inside, Garrett and Chloe are already huddled in the dimly lit room.

“Always last to the party,” Chloe mutters, staying focused on the Enigma machine she’s studying.

Kyran is nowhere to be seen, but Garrett grins, glancing up from a brass cipher disk. “Hey Ellie. You finally made it.”

My temper flares, but I squelch it. “Kyran was already here?” I cross the room to a glass case that houses the Jefferson disk, noting it requires numbers, not words, to order the disks and dismissing it as a possibility. Though there are likely multiple ways to decipher the riddle, I think Chloe has it wrong with Enigma. Garrett is definitely closer with the brass disks.

“He didn’t bother with the Crypt,” Garrett replies, eyes back on the puzzle. “Maybe he figured it out in his head. Pressure’s on.”

He doesn’t seem worried, which is annoying.