by Ruth Fox
“Just seems like it,” Sister said.
Zach nodded. Suddenly, he kind of liked the two servers. “I won’t tell anyone,” he said as they led him out of the larder. “Okay. I need a pot of water.”
The monsters looked pointedly towards the sink, where there was a pile of crusted and grimy pans.
Zach groaned as he turned on the rusty taps to fill the sink. After all their efforts to cross the Wall and infiltrate the Grotto, here he was scrubbing the monsters’ dishes.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It took an hour, but Zach finally had a clean pot full of rice on the stove, bubbling merrily. He was chopping up the pickled onions with a plastic spatula—Brother and Sister refused to give him a knife, or even a fork. This was annoying, because the onions just kind of squished under the plastic blade, but it was better than nothing.
The elevator clanged out in the corridor. A few seconds later a monster entered the kitchen—it was one of the stocky guards, one of the frightening Trolls. It wasn’t Miles, but he still looked similar. He had his silver gun slung over his shoulder, and a harried look on his bulbous face.
“You two,” he growled. “You’re needed up at the fence. There’s trouble.”
“The humans?” asked Brother. “But we’ll be no use against them.”
“I’ve been ordered to gather all personnel performing non-essential tasks. You,” he said pointedly. “Are most definitely non-essential.”
“We’re not soldiers,” Sister protested further. “Let the others deal with it!”
“It’s a show of force, you layabouts, not a war. We just need to scare them off. Now!”
The servers looked towards Zach.
“Lock the door,” said the guard, rolling his eyes. “What are you doing with a human in here, anyway?”
“We have permission. Let’s go,” Brother said sharply, leading Sister out through the door. Zach hoped, just for a second, that they would forget about the door—no such luck. They closed it firmly, and he heard the click of a lock as Sister fitted her wristband into the keyhole.
That didn’t stop Zach from checking it to make sure. It was solid. Even when he kicked it—hurting his foot and adding another bruise to his collection—it didn’t budge.
But there was another way in and out of the kitchen.
He hurried across the room and opened the door to the larder. He stepped into the frigid air and dashed across to the vent.
Sitting against the wall, he unfastened his watch. He looked at it for a moment, not liking what he was about to do. It wasn’t just the fact that it had cost his mum and dad a lot of money—he wouldn’t be getting a replacement, that was for sure—but it really was a cool watch. He didn’t want to destroy it.
Steeling himself, he turned the watch over and twisted the band so he could use the prong of the buckle to jimmy the back. It popped free, revealing the inner workings. There were tiny little cogs and springs, all moving in perfect order—but they stopped when he pulled out the battery with his fingernail. Then he tipped the delicate workings into his hands. The biggest cog would be perfect.
The blast of cold air made him flinch. It was much worse up close. But he realised something as he ran his hand over the front of the vent. The cold air had affected the metal. It felt kind of crackly.
He could hear the giant fans somewhere deep inside the duct, whirring softly. At least he’d been right about this—the vents led, eventually, to the outside of the building, probably up through the ducts he’d seen on the top. They also channelled down through the deeper levels of the building, moving air from the outside in. Which meant the vents were all connected.
Zach took the cog and slipped it into the slot on the head of the screw. He turned it gently at first, not wanting to risk breaking the cog. It was the only one he had, after all. The screw scraped a little, then started to turn. Zach grinned.
There were six screws in all, and in the end, it was only the last one that caused him any problems. His fingers were numb by that stage and it was hard to hold the cog tightly. He almost dropped it several times. Finally, the last screw was free.
Zach lifted the grate upwards. He set it aside, and ducked his head through into the dark space.
He could see light spilling in from another vent a few metres along the duct. He took a deep breath and crawled inside.
The other vent was smaller than the one in the larder, barely half the size. Zach pressed his face up close and found himself looking through into the freezer room.
He could see Ryder there, sitting just metres away. Ryder’s eyes were closed.
“Hey!” he called softly. Then, a little louder. “Hey!”
Ryder looked around, confused, then settled back to sleep. Zach reached into his pocket. He still had a few chocolate-coated sultanas that the Troll, Miles, had missed. He flicked one through the grate. It bounced on the floor and rolled unnoticed into the corner. Zach sighed in frustration, remembering how impossible it had been to aim that stupid fishing rod in the game at the fair. He blew out a breath, told himself to relax, and tried once more. This time, it pinged off Ryder’s head, and Ryder looked straight through the vent at Zach.
He stood up and crossed to the vent, leaning close and whispering: “Zach? Is that you?”
“Yeah!” he said, relieved to see his friend was okay. “Yeah, it’s me. I’ve found a way out—I think. But I have to find the others.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ryder replied. “Push this vent out, okay? We’ll do it together.”
Getting Ryder out of there was the only thing in the world Zach wanted to do. They could face this together, figure it out as they went.
Zach rattled the metal. It held firm. He pulled the remnants of his watch out of his pocket and prepared to push them through the slot.
“Wait,” hissed Ryder. “I’ll never fit through there. Neither will some of the other kids.”
Zach pulled the cog back. He knew his friend was right. His larger frame would never fit through this vent. “There’s another vent in the larder,” he said. “It’s much bigger. I’ve unscrewed it. We just have to get all of you out of this room.”
Another blast of cold air hit him.
“I have to go,” he said, tucking the pieces of his watch back into his pocket.
There was silence on Ryder’s side.
“Ryder?” Zach said desperately. “I’ll get you out of there. Ryder, just trust me, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I do,” Ryder said miserably.
Zach backed along the duct and scrambled out of the vent. He dragged a box in front of the space so it couldn’t be seen. He put the remnants of his ruined watch into his pocket. Then he went back to his pot of rice—and his hopes that somehow, he could manage to work this out.
❖ ❖ ❖
Brother and Sister came back a few minutes later, and Zach hoped they wouldn’t go into the back room and discover he’d left the vent open. He decided he’d keep them busy.
“Flour,” he said, holding up a packet, spilling white powder on the floor. Then a small block, oozing yellowish grease. “And butter. You can mix them together with a bit of water to make pastry.” Zach pointed to where he had cleared a space on the bench and scrubbed it down. “I’ll make a pie for dessert with some of those canned cherries.”
The distraction worked. In fact, Brother looked to be enjoying himself as he vigorously cut the butter into the flour. He was actually quite good at it, because he could use two spoons at once, one in each hand, and still hold the bowl in place with his spare hands.
“Can you check the rice?” Zach asked Sister.
“You’re supposed to be cooking, brat,” Sister growled. “Don’t think you can give me orders.”
“I can’t do everything at once. You can help me, or you can just let it bu
rn and see what Donovan thinks then . . .”
Sister walked across to the pot and looked in.
“That smells . . .”
“Delicious,” said Brother. “Like something Mother used to cook, do you remember?”
“Rice casserole,” said Sister. “With mushroom sauce.”
“We used to be wealthy,” Brother said to Zach, who listened intently. “Our father was an Old One. He was a powerful man. But when he died, we were attacked. They broke into the house. Took everything, and burned what they didn’t. Left us with nothing.”
“Except Father’s Cingulum,” said Sister. “I took it in to trade at a pawnbroker. The owner looked at me strangely, then told me I should meet him in an alley at the back of the shop. When we did so, he told us about Donovan. About the Grotto, and the chance we have . . .”
“‘To usher in a new era,’” said Brother. “And when the Grelgoroth rises again, he will have us to thank. We’re only Servers now, but when it’s over, we’ll be richer than we ever were. Everything that we lost will be worth it, because it led us here.”
Sister was watching the rice spiral around and around in the pot. “To the Grelgoroth.”
Zach finished chopping the onions and tried to think of how Lex would get them to keep talking. “I’ve never heard of the Grelgoroth,” he said cautiously. “Why doesn’t he give you another wristband—Cingulum, I mean? It’s not fair that only one of you gets the privilege.”
“We share our privilege!” Sister said.
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re the one who gets to wear it,” Brother said sulkily.
“Because Father left it to me, Antolin.”
“He never said that in his will! ‘To the firstborn of my children’, that’s what he wrote.”
“And I was born two minutes before you!”
They were glaring at one another, Sister with her four hands on her hips, Brother with his four hands clenched into fists.
Then Brother pushed away from the bench, growling. “You’d better just hurry up, boy. Donovan will be waiting.”
Zach took a frying pan, which he’d also scrubbed as clean as he could manage, and tipped the onions in. He added the tinned tomatoes and put it onto the second hotplate, where it began to sizzle. “This will only need half a minute,” he said. “I’ll drain the rice.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The meal, when it was done, looked rather presentable. And (Zach had sneaked as many secret mouthfuls as he could, since he didn’t know when, or if, he’d be fed) it actually didn’t taste too bad, despite the unusual ingredients. He stood back with Brother and Sister and they all looked at the plates on the bench.
“Are you sure it’s good?” asked Sister.
“I’m a good cook,” said Zach. “I’ve been reviewed several times.” It was true. Mr. and Mrs. Morgenstern always told him his food tasted fantastic. Even Monster-boy had liked his food, hadn’t he? And—if they ever got out of here—he’d make Lex write up a proper article for the school newsletter. He wouldn’t care who read it and thought he was a sissy. If they all got out of here, with their lives and their brains intact, people could think whatever they liked about him.
“All right,” said Brother, at last, with the air of someone who was about to jump into a shark tank. “We’ll take it down.”
❖ ❖ ❖
They made Zach carry the plates and marched him up the hallway to the elevator.
Inside, Sister pressed the button for level L11. The lift clanked and groaned and began to descend. Zach watched the numbers flick past. He was nervous. The plates were slippery in his hands. Now that he’d warmed up, he could feel each one of the cuts and scrapes and bruises on his body. He also felt incredibly tired.
The metal doors slid open, revealing a long, wide, high-ceilinged room. Bright lights hung on twisted cords, casting deep shadows into the corners. There were partitions separating different areas, and Zach saw computer equipment inside them. Some of it looked almost new. Most of it looked old—control boards with blinking lights, knobs and switches; a large printer emitting scratchy noises as it spat out a stream of white paper covered in fine black lines; bulky curved monitors displaying staticky black-and-white images of things he couldn’t make out.
Brother and Sister pushed him forwards.
“Madam Donovan?” called Brother. “Dinner is served.”
A human woman turned from the bench she was working at. She had a soldering iron in one hand, and a small piece of fine silver wire in the other. She was wearing plastic goggles, but they’d been pushed up on her head, pulling her dark blonde hair back tightly from her face. The skin around her mouth and eyes was crinkled with fine little lines, as if she’d done a lot of smiling, once. But she certainly wasn’t smiling now.
It took him by complete surprise, because even if he hadn’t been expecting Donovan to be a monster—and the thought that there might be a human working here amongst the kidnappers hadn’t even crossed his mind—he’d definitely been expecting a him, from the moment anyone had mentioned a person named “Donovan.” He realised now that he had never heard any of the monsters refer to Donovan as a “he.” He and the others had just made that assumption.
He was so confused that, at first, he didn’t recognise her. He’d only seen her once before, after all, and then only in a wrinkled and faded photograph in the dark and dingy light of Herman Sanders’s hallway.
But it was her.
He nearly dropped the plates of food in shock.
“What’s this? Who’s this boy?” Donovan said briskly.
“Our new cook,” said Sister proudly, as if she’d personally taught Zach all he knew. “He’ll be serving you from now on.”
“Good,” said Donovan, who had noticed Zach’s gaze and narrowed her eyes in response. “As long as what he serves is better than what you’ve been calling food . . . which wouldn’t be hard for a human, even one who’s still a child. How old are you, boy?”
“I’m . . .” Zach gulped. “I’m twelve. Ma’am.”
“Your name?”
“Z-Zach,” Zach stuttered. “Ma’am.”
“And what are you serving me for dinner, Zach?”
“Risotto,” Zach said, and thrust the plates out in front of him. He knew it wasn’t really risotto, and he was ashamed of giving this creation the title of a gourmet meal, but “risotto” sounded better than “white rice with leftovers.” “And cherry pie. But it would have been better with fresh ingredients.”
Donovan raised one eyebrow, obviously still puzzled about Zach’s odd behaviour. “I don’t doubt it. Slim pickings out here in the South. Still. This looks passable. Put it on the bench over there. And find yourself a chair.” She motioned towards the other end of the bench, and turned back to her work, touching the soldering iron gently to the little silver wire. “I have to complete this first. It’s delicate work. I must match the filaments perfectly—it has to be aligned if it’s going to conduct the energies properly.”
Zach put the plate down gratefully—he’d been afraid he would drop it—and found a padded chair at the other end of the bench. He pulled it across and sat down.
It felt good to get off his feet. He felt a bit steadier now he was sitting, and he took a deep breath. He wasn’t imagining things. The woman he saw in front of him was the woman he’d seen in Herman’s photos. Exactly the same woman. And that was the strangest thing.
She should have been older by now. In the photograph, the one where he’d been looking at his wife, Mr. Sanders had looked about thirty or forty. Now he was probably close to sixty. Maybe even seventy. But Donovan—N. D. S. as she was named on her wedding ring, which he now guessed stood for Nicola Donovan Sanders—looked younger than Zach’s mum.
“There,” said the woman, clucking her tongue and setting her s
oldering iron down. “Perfect alignment. That should allow for a continuous transfer of energy—perhaps the best, most uninterrupted flow we’ve had so far. I’ll test it after dinner.”
Zach wasn’t sure if she was talking to him, to Brother and Sister (who were both still hovering near the door), or to herself. He thought it was probably best to say nothing.
At that moment there was a knock at the door. Donovan’s face creased in annoyance.
“What now?” she huffed. When there was no answer, she called, “Come!”
A monster lumbered in through the door. Zach recognised him from last night—it was the stocky one with the silver gun, Miles. He kept his eyes lowered. “Ma’am,” he said in his growly voice. “You asked to be updated about . . . developments with the humans.”
“Yes? Well?” said Donovan. “Have you driven them back?”
“They are persistent,” Miles said. His shirt stretched tight across his chest as he scratched his blocky, bald head. “We fired into the air over their heads. That scared some of them. But since morning arrived, more have come, some carrying guns of their own. The smog cloud will stop them working properly, but our people are getting territorial. Some are taking matters into their own hands.”
In everything that had been happening, Zach had forgotten about the protesters marching to the Wall. They were talking about Mr. Majewski and his friends. About people who lived in Zach’s street and people he saw in the mall and at the bowling alley. Were the monsters really fighting them? Firing guns over their heads?
“I don’t have time for this,” said Donovan with a sigh. “Do whatever you need to.”
No! Zach wanted to yell. You can’t do that. They’re people! You can’t kill them!
But then—the humans had marched on the Wall, shouting and chanting anti-monster slogans. The monsters probably thought they’d come to kill them. No wonder they’d attacked.
Wasn’t this what Mr. Majewski had wanted? Real action? Well, he was getting it now, by the sounds of it. If people were fighting with guns, something bad was going to happen.
