Battle of the Beetles

by MG Leonard

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Dr Lenka replied. ‘I’m sure Lucy will send for me.’

  Bartholomew Cuttle narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes!’ Dr Lenka barked. ‘I was asking because I wanted to know why you are wheeling the girl into the maintenance dome.’

  ‘The maintenance dome?’ Bartholomew Cuttle looked around, surprised. ‘This is not the place I want to be! It seems I may have to admit to being lost.’

  ‘Ha!’ Lenka laughed.

  ‘But, Henrik, what on earth are you doing in the maintenance dome? Shouldn’t you be in the lab with the other scientists, preparing the genetic material from the beetle for the pupation chamber? They’ll be starting any minute now . . . Oh, no, I forgot . . .’ Bartholomew Cuttle stepped right in, so that his face was close to Dr Lenka’s, ‘. . . you’ve been put in charge of the toilets, because you’re a traitor.’

  Lenka didn’t reply. He stared at Darkus’s dad with a burning hatred.

  ‘You weren’t told about the pupation, were you?’ Bartholomew whispered.

  There was silence.

  ‘I thought not.’ Bartholomew stepped back. ‘You know, if the pupation works on the girl, Lucy has promised me that I can be next.’

  ‘Next?’

  Bartholomew Cuttle nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Lucy and I will be Beetle Queen and consort.’ He smiled. ‘We are going to rule this world together.’

  ‘Ha!’ Lenka tried to laugh, but his throat was dry and his voice sounded hollow. He stepped back.

  Novak stared up at Darkus’s dad, unable to believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Of course, I haven’t selected the genus I would like to have introduced into my DNA yet.’ He tapped his lips with his finger. ‘I was thinking of the Hercules beetle. They are so strong. I think Lucy would like a strong beetle by her side, don’t you think?’

  Novak heard Dr Lenka march away and a door slam.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Darkus’s dad muttered, ‘I appear to have upset him.’ Novak thought she saw a smile peeking out from behind his blank expression. ‘Now Spencer, we really should be taking Novak to the hospital, to check all of her vital signs. She shouldn’t step into the pupation chamber until we have checked her blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, et cetera. I know the others are waiting for us, but they can wait a little longer. It wouldn’t do to introduce any kind of a virus into the metamorphosis.’

  ‘Yes, Dr Cuttle, sir,’ Spencer replied and turned the trolley around. ‘It’s this way.’

  Novak wasn’t sure what was happening. The pupation chamber was in the Arcadia dome, in the lab, but they seemed to be wheeling her from one outer dome to another.

  When they arrived at the infirmary, Darkus’s dad freed Novak from her restraints, lifted her gently and sat her on a hospital bed. He made a great show of measuring her height, her weight, her pulse. He did reflex tests on her knees, taking his time and writing everything down. He made her hop across the room, and then walk in a straight line. She kept trying to look him or Spencer in the eye, to glean something from their expressions as to what was happening, but both men were too preoccupied with ensuring she was healthy to notice her glances. They pulled out her tongue and swabbed it. Spencer looked down her throat, and in her ears. Bartholomew Cuttle asked her to unfurl her antennae and then measured them.

  ‘Has anyone made a full study of you since your first pupation?’ he asked.

  Novak shook her head. ‘I think they were only interested in if I died or not.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ He shook his head. ‘Would you mind if I took a look at your eyes?’

  Novak pulled back: no one had seen her beetle eyes.

  ‘No? OK. Not to worry.’ He pointed his pen at her wrist. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to wear jewellery in the pupator. The metal will interfere with the process. You’re going to have to take it off.’

  ‘Oh!’ Novak covered her bracelet with her hand.

  ‘Would you like me to look after it for you?’ Spencer asked. ‘Just until this is over, then I’ll give it straight back.’

  Novak thought about the way Hepburn had kissed Spencer’s nose, and she nodded, slipping the bangle off her wrist.

  ‘Right. I think that’s everything.’ Bartholomew Cuttle slowly read down his list of checks a second time. ‘I’ll just double check.’

  Novak looked at Spencer, and it suddenly hit her that Darkus’s dad was stalling for time.

  ‘Um, excuse me,’ she said. ‘May I go to the bathroom?’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ Bartholomew Cuttle replied, sounding oddly delighted by the idea. ‘We can’t have you stepping into the pupator with a full bladder. In fact, do – erm, you know – take your time. Make sure your bowels are empty too. Take as long as you need.’

  Novak grimaced, but she nodded, and Spencer escorted her round the corner to a toilet and positioned himself outside, a polite distance from the door.

  Novak sat down on top of the toilet seat. She didn’t need to go, but if this was a game to play for time, then she wanted to help. Darkus’s dad had told her to listen carefully to everything he said, so she ran through the conversation he’d had with Dr Lenka. It didn’t make much sense. Bartholomew Cuttle was obviously trying to make him cross, but Novak couldn’t see how that would help her.

  After a while, Novak flushed the chain, and then slowly washed her hands and dried them thoroughly. Finally she came out of the bathroom.

  ‘All set?’ Spencer asked, cheerily.

  Novak nodded and followed him back to the room where Bartholomew Cuttle was waiting for them. ‘I’m going to ask you to hop back up here, on to the trolley, please, Novak,’ he said.

  She dutifully did as she was told. He made no attempt to strap her back down.

  ‘You must feel so proud to be helping your mother with her experiments today,’ he said. ‘There are many people who would give anything to be such an important part of her work.’

  Confused, Novak looked at Spencer. His hopeful face calmed the fear leaping about inside her chest. Hepburn trusted Spencer, so she would too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Silphidae

  ‘I can’t hold him for much longer!’ Novak heard Mawling bellowing. ‘Lock the door! LOCK IT! NOW!’ She tried to sit up on the stretcher, but Bartholomew Cuttle gently put his hand on her chest, indicating she should stay lying down. She’d been wheeled at a leisurely pace from the infirmary dome, back along the connecting corridor and around the perimeter of the Arcadia dome until they were approaching the laboratory.

  Darkus’s dad stepped into the laboratory with Spencer at his heels, leaving her lying outside. Novak stared up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the commotion and shouts she was hearing.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’

  Novak sat bolt upright at the sound of Mater’s voice. Lucretia Cutter darted towards her, with the speed of a huntsman spider. She shook her head, to show she didn’t know, and her mother skittered past her into the laboratory. Silently slipping off the stretcher, Novak crept to the doorway and peeped into the room.

  ‘It’s Lenka, he, he, got into the pupator. He . . .’ Spencer was standing in front of Lucretia Cutter, staring at the floor.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Mater’s head swung in a wide arc, examining the room with her compound eyes.

  ‘Dr Vikhrov is hurt.’ Novak saw Darkus’s dad crouching down beside one of Mater’s scientists. ‘We need to get him to the infirmary immediately.’

  Novak saw a spray of red drops on the glass wall between the laboratory and the pupation chamber. She gasped. It was blood.

  ‘What happened to the lab team?’

  ‘I think they ran away,’ he replied.

  ‘Ran away?’ Lucretia Cutter spat.

  Ling Ling stepped forward and bowed. ‘Mawling and I responded to a call for help from Dr Vikhrov,’ she reported. ‘When we arrived Lenka was in there,’ she pointed through the glass wall, ‘attacking Dr Vikhrov. Mawling threw Lenka off as I dragge
d Dr Vikrov out, and then together we fought with Lenka, driving him back into the pupation chamber. Dr Vikrov managed to lock the door before collapsing to the floor. During the fight the lab team fled.’

  ‘Lucy, Dr Vikhrov is losing blood,’ Bartholomew said, his voice urgent. ‘We need to stem the bleeding.’

  ‘Do we know which beetle genome Dr Vikhrov used for the pupation?’ Lucretia Cutter stalked over to the desk, ignoring him. She tapped at the computer keyboard. ‘Which beetle did Lenka have introduced into his DNA?’

  Darkus’s dad looked to the door of the laboratory and spotted Novak.

  ‘Novak, bring in the stretcher.’ He waved her forwards and she saw that his hands were covered in Dr Vikhrov’s blood.

  She nodded and quickly dragged it into the laboratory.

  ‘Novak,’ Darkus’s dad said in a commanding whisper, ‘I need you to pull the handle and lower the bed to the floor.’

  She didn’t move. She couldn’t stop staring at Dr Vikhrov. There was blood everywhere, there were gashes across his neck and forehead, and his left ear was gone.

  ‘Novak, listen to me. Dr Vikhrov needs our help. I need you to lower the bed so that I can lift him on to the stretcher.’ Darkus’s dad had removed his lab coat and was ripping the sleeves out of it, folding them and using them to stem the bleeding.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Novak asked.

  ‘No.’ Bartholomew looked her in the eyes. ‘And he is going to be just fine, as long as we get him to the infirmary as soon as possible. You can help me do that, can’t you?’

  Novak nodded and sprang into action, lowering the bed and helping Darkus’s dad as he carefully moved Dr Vikhrov on to the stretcher.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Spencer held up a labelled syringe. ‘Silphidae. I think the genome was from one of the Silphidae!’

  ‘A carrion beetle,’ Lucretia said, ‘how interesting. Well, that would explain Henrik’s insatiable desire to eat flesh.’ She laughed. ‘Unfortunate that Dr Vikhrov didn’t think of that before he agreed to perform the pupation.’

  Bartholomew Cuttle pulled the handle that lifted the stretcher to waist height, taking the remains of his lab coat and carefully wedging it under Dr Vikhrov’s injured head. ‘I’m taking him to the infirmary,’ he told Lucretia Cutter.

  ‘No.’ Mater pointed at Mawling. ‘He can do that.’

  ‘But he needs immediate medical attention,’ Darkus’s dad protested. ‘Without it, he could die.’

  ‘I don’t care if he dies,’ she said. ‘Dr Vikhrov is no use to me any more.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I said no!’ Lucretia said, drawing herself up to her full height.

  There was silence as Novak watched Mawling wheel Dr Vikhrov away.

  ‘You will help me examine what has become of Henrik.’

  ‘He’s still in there,’ Ling Ling said. ‘Inside the pupation chamber.’

  Looking through the glass wall at the pupator, Novak stared at the white pod that she’d been shoved into all those years ago. She remembered the three steps, stumbling through the door and curling up on the floor of the pod, frightened. As it was sealed shut she heard fluid filling the outer chamber. Novak didn’t remember coming out of the pupator, just waking up in a bed and feeling like a stranger inside her own body.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Bartholomew Cuttle asked. Novak saw that his face was grey. He looked upset.

  She thought about the conversation in the hallway with Dr Lenka, when he’d said he was going to be next into the pupator, and then all their time-wasting in the hospital. He knew this was going to happen! He’d made it happen, in an attempt to save her from the pupation chamber, and now Dr Vikhrov was hurt and possibly dying.

  ‘I want to see how well the metamorphosis worked.’ Mater clapped her hands together like a delighted child. ‘I’ve never tried it on a grown man before.’ She flicked a switch on the console. ‘Henrik, can you hear me? I’m going to open the door.’

  Ling Ling drew back her left leg, moving her hands forward into a defensive stance.

  Novak found herself shuffling backwards towards the door. She didn’t want to see what had happened to Henrik Lenka.

  The pod wall peeled back in segments, like the petals of an opening flower, and the door of the pupation chamber slid open. Novak’s blood ran cold. Lenka’s face was that of a murderous beetle pirate. One beady compound eye stared at them, underlined by a stripe of chitinous scales running across his face to a decimated nose. They stopped where his top lip should have been. The left side of his face was still human, one cold blue eye staring out of pale acne-puckered skin. His mouth was a blackened pit out of which protruded huge jaws lined with razor-sharp mandibles and dripping with blood. With his one human arm, he held a strange bloody lump up to his mouth and took a bite.

  Novak’s stomach turned as she realized he was eating Dr Vikhrov’s ear.

  ‘Well, hello, Lucy,’ His voice came over the speakers in the laboratory. ‘What do you think of my new look?’ He waved his left arm, which had a black and orange exoskeleton and a vicious claw where his hand should have been.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ Lucretia replied. ‘I didn’t think you had the courage.’

  ‘I did this for you.’ There was a scratching noise, chitinous legs against metal, as he clambered out of the pupation chamber, approaching the glass partition. Novak saw that he had two stunted misshapen beetle legs sprouting out of his torso.

  ‘We’re alike, you and I,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be alone any more, Lucy. We can rule the world together.’

  ‘I’m not happy, Henrik,’ Lucretia replied. ‘You’ve chased my scientists away, and hurt Dr Vikhrov.’

  Lenka rolled his human eye and laughed – a chilling, gurgling sound. ‘I was hungry.’

  ‘You monster!’ Spencer cried out and surged forward. ‘Dr Vikhrov’s my friend!’

  Bartholomew grabbed his shoulders, holding him back. ‘Spencer, why don’t you take Novak back to her cell?’ he said, gently pushing Spencer towards Novak and the door. ‘Please.’

  ‘Oh, no, let the boy come at me.’ Henrik Lenka leered at Spencer through the toughened glass. ‘I’m still hungry.’

  Bartholomew turned his back to the glass. ‘We can’t leave him in there,’ he said to Lucretia, ‘and we can’t let him out. What do you plan on doing with him?’

  She flicked a switch so that Henrik Lenka couldn’t hear them. ‘I’ll tranquillize him. Ling Ling can put him in a cell.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘He will make a very useful live specimen for you and Master Crips to work with, don’t you think?’ Lucretia Cutter replied.

  ‘He’s dangerous, Lucy,’ Bartholomew said. ‘He’s a carrion beetle, a dead flesh eater.’

  ‘Well, then, you’d better be careful, hadn’t you,’ Lucretia laughed, ‘because he really hates you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Hatchery

  Darkus dropped to the floor and listened, looking at Baxter for reassurance. He and Virginia had taken Baxter and Marvin out of their bamboo cages, and most of the larger Base Camp beetles were sitting on top of the rucksack, antennae alert. They’d climbed down three ladders so far, and hadn’t encountered anyone, although – Darkus reminded himself – it was about four o’ clock in the morning. They searched around on hands and knees, but couldn’t find any tiles with sunken handles.

  ‘This must be the bottom floor of the Biome,’ he said, looking up and down the corridor. The section of the passage they were in was lit, but both ways were dark.

  ‘Which direction?’ Virginia asked.

  ‘The big dome is that way,’ Darkus said. ‘I think.’

  Virginia nodded, and they set off in silence. The light sensors in the floor were unnerving: they only lit the section you were walking on, making it impossible to know if anything was waiting in the darkness beyond, and so they depended on the beetles’ senses and listened, alert to the slightest noise, as they crept in the direction
of the big dome.

  ‘Look, here’s a door.’ Darkus placed his hands and an ear on the hexagonal door to his right. He stepped back and looked around the frame. ‘How does it open?’

  ‘Try the thingamabob,’ Virginia suggested.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Darkus pulled it out of his pocket and pressed the white hexagon. The door slid up and a warm, earthy smell invited them into the room beyond. Red lights flickered on. The room was long, stretching out parallel to the corridor they’d been walking along. It was divided by four troughs that spanned the full length of the space.

  Stepping up to the nearest trough, Darkus dipped his hand into it, scooping up what looked like earth. He rubbed it between his fingers.

  ‘Look, Baxter, oak mulch, like we put in your terrarium.’ He lifted his fingers to Baxter’s face so that he could smell it with his antennae.

  Virginia grabbed his arm as a distant rumbling noise grew louder, accelerating towards them like a ten-pin bowling ball being returned to a player after a strike. Darkus leapt backwards as a giant white boulder dropped from the ceiling into the trough in front of him, sinking down into the mulch.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ Virginia whispered.

  Darkus looked up at the ceiling. It was a grid of wide square holes.

  ‘It fell through one of those holes.’

  ‘Yeah, I get that, but what is it?’ Virginia came forward, reaching out and poking it gently.

  Darkus placed his hands either side of the giant ball. It had a texture that reminded him of elephant hide. ‘It’s an egg!’ he realized.

  ‘An egg?’ Virginia frowned. ‘What kind of creature lays an egg that big?’

  Darkus looked at her. ‘Escarabajo gigante.’

  ‘It’s a dinobeetle egg?’

  ‘Lucretia Cutter is breeding giant beetles in her insect farm!’ He looked up. ‘The adult beetles must be on the floor above us.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Their eggs get sifted down through those holes into these troughs of oak mulch.’ He moved along the trough and pointed. ‘Look, there are more.’

  ‘This is a hatchery!’ Virginia exclaimed.