by David Lubar
I knew she was right. No point stalling—especially when there was a slime monster down there, growing larger by the minute.
I grabbed my left ear. “You realize Rodney would love to do this.” He’d tried. Luckily, he’d failed.
I yanked on my ear. It ripped off way too easily. That bothered me. I put the ear on the dashboard in front of Dr. Cushing.
“I should be able hear you,” I said. “Just like I can move my finger after it breaks off. Everything still acts like it’s connected. I just wish you could hear me.”
“Maybe we can,” she said. “Our voices vibrate through our skulls. It’s possible the sound will come through your ear. Try it.”
I got out and stepped away from the car.
“Can you hear me?”
Dr. Cushing’s voice came through the left side of my head, where my ear had been. I was hearing her through the ear in the car. “Yeah. Loud and clear. Can you hear me?”
I saw Dr. Cushing pick up my ear and hold it close to her own ear. I repeated the question.
“It’s faint, but I hear you. I guess it’s time to go in.”
“Guess so.”
“Good luck,” she said.
The door was locked. But I still had Smetchinski’s keys. I found one that worked.
I walked into the old plant. There was some sludge on the floor, and a lot of flies. “I see three doors across from me,” I said.
“Abigail says to take the middle one.” Dr. Cushing’s voice came through just fine.
I heard a buzzing close to my ear. There were flies on my shoulder. More landed on my arms. One crawled across the back of my hand. I guess, to them, I was just more dead meat. I hoped they weren’t planning to lay eggs in me. I went to the middle door. There was a wheel on the outside, like on a ship’s hatch, and a sign on the wall with a picture of a skull.
DANGER!
TOXIC ENVIRONMENT!
DO NOT ENTER!
I told Dr. Cushing.
“You should be fine,” she said.
I spun the wheel until the door opened, then went inside. The air was sort of green. I held up my hand to make sure the poison wasn’t doing anything bad to my skin. The flies on my arm dropped like—well, like flies. I stood there for a moment, staring down at the floor. Someone who’d just walked in would have thought I’d spilled a large box of raisins.
There was one door in front of me, and one to the left. “Go left,” Dr. Cushing said.
I went down a stairway and found myself in a room filled with large pipes. I started to walk through. “Here I go.”
“Wait!” Dr. Cushing shouted.
A blast of steam shot out from the pipe right in front of me. I couldn’t feel the heat, but I was pretty sure it was hot enough to fry my face. Though I guess fry wasn’t the right word. I didn’t even know what you called it when you steamed meat. Whatever you called it, I didn’t want it happening to my face.
“There’s hot steam,” I told Dr. Cushing.
“There doesn’t seem to be any way to shut it off,” she said. “It looks like it’s driven by a series of turbines. So there should be some sort of pattern. But it might be complicated. See if you can figure it out.”
I watched the nearest pipe. After a short pause, another burst came out. Then there were two quick bursts. There was a definite pattern. I looked past it, to the next pipe. It was following the same pattern, but slightly later. So were all the pipes. I could get through, as long as I could time my moves just right.
I looked at my watch. The second hand sat there, as dead as a zombie. I guess the steamy air had killed it. That didn’t matter. I’d practiced my fake pulse so much, I had a feel for the timing. I waited until I knew the biggest gap was about to come at the first pipe, then started to make my way across the room.
If there was ever a place where it was good not to be nervous, this was it. The worst part was, I probably wouldn’t even know I was getting burned until my face started to fall off like meat from an overcooked sparerib. So I had to be extra careful. But I got across without being blasted.
“Made it,” I said. I took a sniff, just to be sure. It didn’t smell like someone had just cooked dinner. That was a relief. I reached the next door. There was only one this time. Sludge, steam, poison gas . . . What next?
I opened the door and found out.
I faced some kind of huge engine with all sorts of moving parts. Gears and wheels were spinning. Shafts stuck out, whipping through the air like baseball bats. Pistons thrust out into the walkway. This was not a great place for a kid with weak bones. I didn’t want to get hit out of the park. There was one path down the middle. But there was stuff whipping out across it from both sides. I guess RABID loved deadly traps as much as BUM loved exploding robots.
“Any advice?” I said.
“Watch your step,” Dr. Cushing said. “I wish I had something better to suggest.”
Watch your step. Those were the words that helped me figure out I could see in different directions with each eye. I moved up to the edge of the path and let my eyes drift to the sides.
Don’t mess up.
I wanted to run through as fast as I could. But I knew, from all the games I’d played, how that strategy only works once in a while, and is really only good if you just reached a checkpoint. You make a dash and hope you get lucky. If not, you try again. This wasn’t a game. I didn’t have infinite chances. I didn’t even have a checkpoint. I had to do it right the first time.
I inched forward. A piston shot toward my head from the left. I ducked, waited, then stood and moved on. A chain whipped across the floor from the right. I jumped and let it pass under me.
The rest of the way across, I ducked, leaned, jumped, and twisted. If I hadn’t been able to see both sides at once, I would never have made it. Finally, I reached another door.
“I’m still in one piece,” I said. I almost expected a score to appear on the wall.
“Good. The creature should be down below.”
End of the level. Time to face the boss. I opened the door, walked through it, and found myself on a small ledge high above the floor. There was a gigantic vat below me, almost two stories high. The creature was there, filling the whole vat and quivering. It was the color of weak iced tea. I saw thin threads of dark green running through it, branching out from the center like the veins in Smetchinski’s eyes. Some of them went all the way to the surface. Green goop trickled from those spots. Dozens of blobs of goop, like tiny slugs, oozed over the rim of the vat, down the sides, and across the floor.
Mushroom poop.
At the center of the slime monster, something glowed and pulsed, like a heart made of jelly. That’s where I had to go.
“This is it,” I said.
“Be careful,” Dr. Cushing said.
What was the careful way to get to the center of a gigantic modified slime mold? I didn’t know. But I knew the quickest way. The top was only about five feet below me. I’d spent a lot of time at the town swimming pool last summer. I knew how to dive.
“Wait,” Dr. Cushing said.
“What?”
“Abigail wanted me to warn you that the reaction to the heat might be a bit more violent than she originally thought.”
“Great. I’ll keep that in mind.”
I could see the creature growing right in front of my eyes. It would spill out of the vat soon. I didn’t have any time to think about what I was doing. I jumped up as high as I could and dived toward the vat of slime.
At that instant, I wasn’t sure whether I was acting like a hero or an idiot.
21
Down to Earth
It was like diving into pudding. My momentum took me halfway to the glowing spot. I kicked my feet. My body moved forward. The slime around me seemed to ripple. Some of the dark green tendrils wriggled toward me. A couple wrapped around my legs. I used my arms and swam hard for the center.
I reached into my pocket and grabbed one of the gumballs. Here goes. I gav
e it a squeeze. Instead of breaking, it shot out from between my thumb and first finger.
Great. Just great.
Luckily, it only went a few inches. I grabbed it and tried again, wrapping my other hand around my fingers so I could keep my grip on the gumball. I squeezed. It didn’t break. I squeezed harder. It still didn’t break.
The tendrils were pulling my legs in two directions, like a wishbone. More were coming. I needed to break the gumball right away. But my fingers weren’t strong enough. There was nothing solid I could use to stomp it. I only had one choice.
I held the gumball up to my mouth and pushed it through my lips, trying to keep them as tightly sealed around it as possible. I didn’t want slime mold pouring into my mouth.
My stomach didn’t quiver, but my brain felt like it was gagging. I bit down on the gumball just enough to crack it, then spat it back into my hand.
I pushed it into the center of the goop, then crushed it, releasing the heat.
I heard a sound like Mookie’s stomach makes when he’s hungry. Except the rumble was a thousand times louder, and all around me. The slime at the center turned from light yellow to dark red. It was pulling together, growing thicker. All the slime rushed inward and swept past me. It was like I’d gotten caught in a rough ocean wave. The slime got darker, shifting from weak tea to tomato juice. Then it flashed and burst outward.
Abigail was right. It was a violent reaction.
I felt like I’d been thumped in the chest. By a truck. Everything shot upward. The goop burst toward the ceiling and punched through. It just blew apart the ceiling like it was made of straw. I was carried along with it.
High.
And then higher.
And then, unfortunately, even higher.
If I didn’t have to worry about coming back down, I would have totally enjoyed the trip up. But coming down was definitely not going to be fun. I’d already passed the tops of the trees. I was riding on a wave of exploding goop. I guess I’d been shot up at an angle. I could see the broken roof of the building below me, to my left. To my right, a lot farther over, I could see the pool of sewage in the old treatment pond.
It looked like I was going to fall right between them, in the parking lot.
There was no way my bones would survive that. Or my skin. I’d burst like a plastic bag full of baked beans. I knew exactly what that looked like, since Mookie had brought a bag of beans for lunch once and managed to drop it on the cafeteria floor. I wondered whether my brain would keep on working after it was smeared across the parking lot.
I hoped, at least, I wouldn’t land on Dr. Cushing’s cool car.
If only there were some way I could glide over toward the sewage, I might have a chance. I’d seen pictures of skydivers gliding before they pulled their chutes, but I had no idea how they did it, and I had an incredibly short amount of time left to learn new skills.
I’d stopped rising and had started to fall. Wind whipped past my face. I tried tilting my body toward the sewage. Nothing happened except I began to tumble.
My torn pants legs flapped like kite tails. Mookie’s jacket fluttered open on either side of me, like useless wings.
Useless?
Maybe not. I remembered Mookie running around, flapping his jacket. MookieHawk. I wondered whether the jacket would be enough to let me control my direction a little. That’s all I needed—just a nudge toward the sewage pool.
I grabbed the bottom edges of the jacket in each hand and stretched my arms out, like Mookie did on the playground—and like I used to do when I was little and I wanted to play superhero. Wings. I had wings. Sort of. They seemed to catch some air. Not enough to slow me much, but enough that I could sort of glide.
I slid through the air, more like an uncoordinated flying squirrel than a bird, trying to angle toward the sewage pool. I spotted the car. Dr. Cushing was standing outside the driver’s door, staring up. Even from far above, I could tell her face was pale from fright. Abigail and Mookie got out to join her. Abigail was pale, too. With Mookie standing between them, they looked like a tomato sandwich.
“Slow down!” Mookie screamed.
“I’d love to!” I was plunging faster and faster. I remembered something from science. The longer you fall, the faster you go. Abigail would be able to figure out exactly how fast I was falling. I didn’t have time for that.
I swooped over some more and tried to figure out how long to keep swooping. I didn’t want to go too far and fly right past the sewage pond. There was a big metal walkway on the other side. That would mess me up just as badly as the parking lot.
The wind ripped the jacket from my grip. It got yanked right off my body. But I was over the sewage. I tried to rotate so I went in feetfirst. This wasn’t the place for a dive.
It sort of worked. I splashed into the wet muck at an angle, but I was straight enough so I didn’t do a belly flop. The sewage felt almost as thick as the slime monster. I closed my eyes and clamped my lips shut. I felt lumps bouncing off my feet and legs as I plunged deeper. I didn’t even want to think about what they were made of. Something else smacked me in the face. The lower I got, the thicker the sludge seemed to be. My plunge stopped just as my feet hit the bottom.
“I made it!” I gasped.
Nooooo!!!!! Bad move. I slammed my mouth shut and swam for the surface. Then I paddled over to the edge of the pool and spat out as much as I could.
Dr. Cushing met me by the fence. “Are you okay?” she asked as I started to climb over to her side.
“I think so.” I looked down at my body for any sign of broken bones. It was hard to tell. I was pretty much painted with sewage from head to toe, over a coating of mutated slime monster.
“That was amazing,” Abigail said.
“Next time, I want to go with you,” Mookie said. “That looked awesome. You were flying!”
“It’s not as much fun as it looks,” I said. I glanced back at the sewage pond, then pointed to where Mookie’s jacket was floating on top. “You want me to get it?”
“Nah. That’s okay. My mom just won another one, and it’s even cooler.”
“Hard to imagine,” I said.
“I was so worried about you.” Dr. Cushing reached out like she was going to give me a hug, but then paused and backed off a step.
I couldn’t blame her. “Maybe I’ll just take a quick dip in the river.”
“Good idea,” she said.
I crossed the street and went down the bank. I didn’t like the idea of washing sewage into the water, but I figured I’d just saved the whole East Coast, or maybe even the whole country, from losing all their fresh water. I washed off, rinsed my mouth a half-dozen times, then went back to the car.
Dr. Cushing handed me my ear. I got out my glue, spread some on the torn edges of the ear, then stuck it back where it belonged.
I screamed, like I always do. It hurts a lot.
“Oh, dear,” Dr. Cushing said. “Is it always that painful?”
“Yeah. It’s bad. At least it doesn’t last long.”
She looked over at Abigail. “I think I know what our first project should be.”
“Absolutely,” Abigail said. “I’ve already started considering approaches. We don’t want to inhibit the regeneration, but we need to inhibit the neurotransmitters.”
“Or block the receptors,” Dr. Cushing said.
Their eyes lit up. They kept talking. I didn’t listen, since I knew I wouldn’t understand any of it. But I was happy to see them so excited.
“Tell me about the monster,” Mookie said.
So while the two scientists discussed neurons and stuff, Mookie and I talked about the things that excited us.
Dr. Cushing dropped off Abigail and Mookie on the way to the museum. I had a feeling the first thing Abigail would do was take a shower. Or maybe rinse out her nose with a garden hose. The first thing Mookie would do would be to get a snack. The fact that he’d been hanging out near large amounts of sewage wouldn’t hurt his appetite.<
br />
Dr. Cushing parked the car in front of the museum. “You can give us a report before you go home, Nathan.”
I looked at the shredded remains of my pants and shirt. “What about clothes?”
“We’ve already gathered some from your room,” she said. “What good is a whole espionage organization if we can’t manage to provide clean clothes for one of our own?”
“Thanks.” One of our own. I liked the sound of that.
“We can get you a duplicate jacket, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“No problem,” I said. “Mom’s used to me forgetting my jacket.”
We went into the Museum of Tile and Grout. Mr. Murphy was sitting there, in a chair next to the desk, waiting for us.
“Peter, I thought you were going to get medical attention.”
“I wanted to wait for Nathan. We never leave someone in the field.” He looked at me, then sniffed. “This time, I definitely smell sewage.”
“That would be me,” I said.
He pointed toward the elevator and told Dr. Cushing, “After you.”
She got in. “I’ll see you superspies on the other side.”
The door closed. The car shot off. I knew it would be a couple minutes before it came back.
I looked at Mr. Murphy. His eyes were half-closed. He seemed to be totally exhausted, and not interested in talking. That was okay. I didn’t mind silence.
But a moment later, he said, “Nathan?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll be a good spy. A very good spy.”
“Thanks.”
“Once I’ve trained you a bit more, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Make that a lot more.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Now you’re mocking me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You seem to dream of nothing else. And, by the way, I’m not old.”
“I never said you were.”
“You implied it.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“That’s because you’re young and inexperienced.”
