“What worries me,” said Lucy, “is never finding out the Truth about any of this. If there’s one certainty in the universe, it’s that there’s TONS of things out there that we don’t know about. There’s so much that we’ll never even begin to imagine with our puny little brains! But it’s definitely out there, existing, whether we like it or not. What’s the point in being afraid of stuff just because you don’t understand it?”
“But what if the Pretenders are, like, evil?”
“Do you know of any species on the planet that’s all good or all evil?” Lucy retorted. “Is Thingus evil?”
“This is giving me a headache,” said Milo. He wrenched his attention away from the mysterious discovery. “Thingus isn’t here. We need to go find him.”
“I know,” Lucy whimpered. “But can you at least take some pictures of this place first? We may never get a chance to come back.”
“Good idea.” Milo patted his back pocket, then winced as he remembered. “Except my phone is at the bottom of Black Hole Lake.”
Lucy kicked a stalagmite. “Why do I never have access to a functioning camera at times like this?” She hastily sketched some of the glyphs in her notebook as Milo pulled her into the elevator.
He pressed the button to go one floor up, to “minus two”. By the process of elimination Thingus must surely be there. Milo’s stomach churned in anticipation. The doors opened.
The raucous din of human activity assaulted their senses. Milo and Lucy slammed their backs against the side wall of the elevator to hide from sight. Footsteps, voices and the ratchets and bangs of heavy machinery echoed around the hall.
“Did anyone see us?” whispered Lucy.
“If they did, I think we’d know.” Milo stuck his head though the open elevator door.
The hallway on this floor was wider than the first, with smooth cement walls and strip lighting. The clanking noises of industry were emanating from a series of large rooms on the left side of the corridor. Lucy and Milo slipped out into the hall.
“So,” Milo whispered, “what’s the plan to rescue Thingus?”
“There’s a plan?”
“No. That’s the problem.” They peeked through a window in the first door, upon which the words “Aerial Projectile Defence” had been painted in red letters.
Inside the room, several men and women in lab coats sat at a row of computers situated behind a thick panel of plexiglass. Beyond it, a small cannon-like apparatus sat twenty metres away from a wall covered in bullseyes. One of the scientists punched a series of commands into his computer, and, with a BANG, the cannon shot a glob of raw black sap, which hit one of the targets with a STHPLUNK. All the scientists in the room cheered.
Is this supposed to be a serious workplace?
Lucy pulled Milo’s elbow and led him down the corridor to the next test chamber. There, two scientists clad in heavily padded safety gear were dousing a crash-test dummy with buckets of sticky black sap. When the figure was covered from head to toe, they retreated to the sides of the room. A third scientist, wearing a soot-stained backpack made of metal canisters, stepped out into the centre of the chamber and shot a forceful jet of flame at the glazed mannequin: SHGKKKKXXXRRGHH!
“The employees at Nu Co. are allowed to use FLAMETHROWERS?” whispered Lucy.
“It certainly beats working in a cubicle,” said Milo.
He ducked down and urged Lucy along to the next room, where the door was ajar. Finger to his lips, he tiptoed to the edge of the door frame.
The right side of this laboratory housed dozens of stacked cages containing white mice. Each cage was mounted with a dispenser filled with unnaturally coloured food pellets: pink, gold and blue. On the left side of the room, in a pair of much larger cages, two chimpanzees jumped and hooted in agitation. A scientist with mussed hair and red sneakers crouched by the cage, his back to Milo. He repeatedly attempted to feed one of the chimps a banana dripping with golden syrup that looked like Nucralose. The angry ape kept slapping the banana away.
“All right, Bobo, we tried the easy way,” said the man. “Colleen!”
A statuesque ponytailed woman emerged from behind the mouse cages carrying a long tube with a rubber bag attached to one end.
Lucy clenched her fists, surely wanting to rush in and break open all the cage doors.
Without warning Milo felt something ruffle the back of his hair. Swatting at the air in confusion, he looked up to see a magpie flying low over his head and into the animal-testing room, where it perched on the chimps’ cage, startling the scientists.
“Are they keeping birds in the lab down the hall?” said the man, perplexed.
A second magpie, smaller than the first, swooped in and fluttered around his head, squawking like a demon.
“I’ll get the net, Fred,” said Colleen. She abruptly turned round and spotted Milo and Lucy in the open doorway. “Hey, there’s a couple of kids out there!” she exclaimed.
“Run!” yelled Milo.
He and Lucy barrelled down the hall, frantically checking each room they passed for any sign of Thingus. Angry shouting reverberated around the corridor behind them.
RAAAAAAXXXXXAAGHH! The muffled sound of a monstrous inhuman howl sounded further down the tunnel.
There he is!
Milo raced down the corridor at top speed, finally reaching a pair of swinging double doors, the source of the bellowing wail.
“I’m coming, Thingus!” cried Milo.
“Wait!” yelled Lucy. “We don’t know what’s in there!”
But there was no time left for hesitation. Heroically, Milo ploughed through the doors, Lucy at his heels.
Substance Nu-791
The double doors swung shut behind Lucy as she slid to a halt next to Milo, her hiking boots screeching on the cement floor. They had entered a wide windowless room lined with buzzing and burbling experimental equipment. This place is a mad scientist’s wildest dream.
At the far end of the chamber, Mr Fisher stood amongst half a dozen scientists and tactically suited security officers all staring in shock at the
