His face went limp. His grip slackened. His arm dropped.
And Mech fell silent.
Cal held his breath.
“Mech?” he whispered. “Hey. Mech.”
He gave the cyborg a shove.
“Hey, ya big lunk. Wake up.”
“Do we really want him to wake up?” Floora asked.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Cal said. “I thought the shock would just buy us some time, not kill him.”
“He did just try to kill us,” Floora pointed out.
“He wasn’t himself,” Cal retorted. “Mech? Jesus. Come on, you damn robot. Rise and shine.”
Cal shoved him again, more violently this time, but eliciting the same lack of response as before.
Something appeared in the air right in front of Cal’s face. It was a large red cross, the edges shimmering slightly like it wasn’t quite in focus.
“Aaaaand Pulverizor is down!” announced the voice of the host, booming around the arena as if from thin air. “The first of our new Hunters has been defeated. Find out what Reduk Topa does next… after these important messages.”
A short musical sting blasted out, then silence returned.
Around the arena, all four doors dropped, clearing the way to the exit.
“We should go,” said Floora, stuffing the equipment back in the bag. “We have to keep running.”
“I can’t just leave him,” Cal said.
“Well, you sure as shizz can’t carry him,” Floora pointed out. “The network will retrieve him.”
“I don’t want the damn network to retrieve him!” Cal said. “He’s not theirs to retrieve!”
From the mouth of one of the exit corridors came a low, threatening growl.
“Sloorgs,” Floora whispered. “We have to go.”
Cal winced as his gaze went from the solitary Sloorg to the motionless cyborg.
“Fonk,” he said, then he placed a hand on Mech’s chest. “We’ll come back for you, big guy.”
Grabbing the backpack and the Floomfle, he stood up.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
Thirty-One
King Floomf of the Floomfles sat in his favorite armchair, dipping half a sandwich into a bowl of soup, moving it to his mouth, and then getting most of the soupy parts stuck in his beard.
He chewed noisily on the soggy bite of the sandwich. The baker, Flourflum, had made the bread himself. It was thick and soft, a most wonderful shade of puce, and slightly burnt around the crusts. Just the way he liked it.
The filling was a salad of vegetables from the Royal Gardens, seasoned with a pinch of cave salt and just the faintest dusting of powdered flurg fat, then smeared liberally in Nutella. Technically, it wasn’t Nutella, but the taste and consistency were more or less identical.
King Floomf brought the sandwich to the soup again, then the soup to his beard. He took another bite and chewed thoughtlessly, both his hand and mouth operating on an auto-pilot that required very little input from his brain.
This allowed him to focus the rest of his attention on the television in the corner of the room, and the drama that was unfolding before his eyes.
He watched, wide-eyed, as two figures collided on screen, then he laughed uproariously at the sight of them. He shook so much that the soup sloshed up the sides of the bowl and onto the tray he had balanced on his legs. He didn’t notice.
“Oh, such a naughty puppet!” he chuckled, then he erupted into laughter again as the Puppetopia cast pulled off a series of well-rehearsed set-piece involving two umbrellas and a roller-skate.
He knew how it ended, of course. He’d seen this episode a hundred times, thanks to Viaview On Demand. Still, it never got old.
A hammering at his front door made him jump, just as he was delivering another cargo of soupy bread to his mouth. This resulted in eighty percent of the soup ending up in his beard, ten percent in his eyebrows, and the rest down the side of his armchair along with what was left of the sandwich.
The hammering came again, more urgent this time.
“Alright, alright,” King Floomf muttered.
He set the tray on the arm of the chair, got himself up after three aborted attempts, then did his best to wipe the soup out of his facial hair. The effect was that the dark orange mess just below his mouth was distributed more evenly around the rest of the beard, turning even more of it the color of sickly carrots.
The thumping on the door came once more, this time shaking it in its frame. King Floomf picked a piece of sandwich from one of his teeth, explored the rest of them with his tongue, then cleared his throat.
“Come.”
The door flew open, and three Floomfles tried simultaneously to pass through one small door, with utterly predictable results.
“Your Maj—” began an ashen-faced footman, before he hissed at the two Floomfles on either side of him. “Get off! I go in first!”
“We’re supposed to announce you,” said one of the others. He blasted on a horn, emitting a sound like a farm animal breaking wind.
“Yeah, we go first,” agreed his companion, before closing his eyes and smashing two cymbals together.
The footman, well and truly jammed in the doorway, decided to stop pushing. They all stood there, stuck fast, while the King glared at them.
“Was there a point to all this?” King Floomf wondered. “I was having lunch.”
“The Hunt, Your Majesty,” said the footman. His eyes flicked to the TV, where the Puppetopia puppets were chasing each other in circles while dressed as fruit pies. “Have you been watching The Hunt?”
“Bits of it,” said King Floomf. He shifted uneasily. “I mean, I’m not a big fan. Not really my thing.”
With a grunt of effort, the footman forced his way into the room. The other two Floomfles landed behind him with a crash and a honk.
Hurrying past the King, the footman crossed to the television and tapped the screen several times, flicking through the channels.
“I was watching that!” King Floomf protested. “It was just getting to the big song number.”
“You’ll want to see this, Your Majesty,” the footman insisted.
He skipped on through the channels, then stopped and tapped back one. “Here it is.”
The footman stepped back, his eyes darting anxiously from the screen to King Floomf and back again.
“What is that? Is that the robot that was here earlier?” asked the King. “It looks similar.”
“I think it is, sir. But that’s not the problem,” said the footman. “Watch.”
There was a scream from the TV. The cameras followed the flight of a humanoid male as a kick launched him through the air.
It cut to an overhead shot just as he crunched down onto the ground. King Floomf took a step closer to the screen, peering at it along the length of his nose.
“And that’s the chap. The mouthy one. Those are the people who came here!”
“Yes, sir, but that’s not it, either.”
King Floomf sighed, irritably. “Then what am I supposed to be looking at?”
The image changed again. A short, wide-eyed figure popped her head out of a bag just long enough to be caught in close-up.
Had King Floomf still been eating his sandwich at that point, he’d have slowly stopped chewing, and a partially masticated lump of it would’ve fallen out of his mouth and onto the floor.
As he wasn’t still eating his sandwich, he just stared at the screen instead, his eyebrows rising, then knotting, then rising again, like they couldn’t quite figure out how to react.
“Oh,” he said, as the cameras cut back to the action, and the little Floomfle vanished from view. “Oh, my.”
Thirty-Two
The smell was the most instantly notable thing about Sector Two. This was closely followed by the taste and then, chasing hot on its heels, the smell again.
The name of the sector, which had been carved into a plank of wood and then, it appeared, repeatedly dipped in
slime, had not filled Cal with a lot of hope. The Belchpits was not the sort of name that conjured up positive images, and his spirits hadn’t exactly been high to start with following the whole Mech situation.
But the smell, though.
Sweet Jesus, the smell.
It was the smell of rotten eggs and sweaty socks. Of death and decay. Of the laundry facilities at a hospital for the double-incontinent. But there was something acrid and hot about the aroma, too. It was as if someone had collected all the worst smells in the world and then proceeded to make a curry out of them.
Cal’s nostrils decided to take nothing to do with it. As a result, the smell seemed to assault him further back in his nasal cavities, coating his throat in their wretched stink. He gagged frequently. His eyes were constantly awash with tears. His mouth ramped up saliva production in the hope of washing the taste away, but only succeeded in making it worse.
Floora, on the other hand, seemed unconcerned. She trotted along as Cal’s side, her feet squelching on the soft, muddy ground. Occasionally, she’d glance off in the direction of one of the angry-looking bugs that zipped around just above the uneven terrain, but if the insects were planning to launch an attack, they were playing their cards close to their chests.
“This is better, isn’t it?” Floora said, as they picked a path across the mulchy ground.
“Than what?” asked Cal. He found that if he spoke in short bursts, he didn’t have to inhale as often. Ideally, he wouldn’t have to inhale at all, but in the interests of staying alive, he accepted that he probably had to.
“Than the last place. With all the bones,” said Floora. She shuddered. “That was creepy.”
“This stinks.”
“Does it?” asked Floora. She stopped for a moment and took a deep breath in through her nose. Cal gagged in sympathy. “Seems fine to me.”
“Your nose is broken,” Cal told her.
They plodded on. Ahead of them lay nothing but wide open space, but Cal was confident this was another trick, and that they’d soon stumble upon whatever the fonk was waiting for them next. He could’ve asked Perko, of course, but the last thing he needed right now was a face-to-face with that animated shizznod.
Somewhere over on Cal’s left, the ground burped, bursting open a bubble of slime and filling the air with yet more stink. He screwed his face up in distaste and hurried on.
“So, you really knew that guy?” Floora asked, racing to keep up with him. “The robot?”
“He’s not a robot,” Cal said. “And yes.”
“Oh. It’s just that you called him a robot.”
Cal shook his head. “I know what I said. He’s not a robot.”
“He seemed to really hate you.”
Cal shrugged. “Sometimes.” He inhaled, then quickly spat it out again. “But not like that. He’s been brainwashed.”
“Do robots even have—?”
“Not a robot.”
“Oh. Yes. Sorry.”
They trudged on for a while. The sky was no longer red, and had turned a pretty bog-standard smear of grays. A thin, smirry sort of rain was falling—not enough to notice, but gradually soaking them both to the skin.
“Is he dead, do you think?” Floora asked.
Cal continued to stare ahead of them. “No. Not Mech. You can’t get rid of Mech that easily,” he said, although the tone of his voice suggested he might not entirely believe that. “He’ll be OK.”
Another hurried breath.
“Until I remind him that I kicked his ass, I mean.”
“He fell on some yogurt,” Floora said.
“My yogurt,” said Cal. “So, I get the win.”
Floora opened her mouth as if to argue, but then decided against it. Somewhere behind them, a Sloorg howled. A response came from somewhere over on the left, not quite level with them, but not far off.
The Sloorg that had appeared in the maze had become trapped in the center when the doors had slammed closed behind Cal and Floora. The maze itself had been far easier to navigate on the way out, the labyrinth of corridors having become a single straight passageway without a single hand trying to grab for them.
From there, it had been a straight run to the entrance to Sector Two, with the Hovercams following them every step of the way. The sprint had taken ten minutes or so, nine of which Cal had spent trying not to be sick. This was partly because of the smell, and partly because of the effort.
Maybe, just maybe, Loren could have a point about his replicator usage.
A third Sloorg howled way off on the right. Floora drew in closer to Cal, and they both walked in silence until they were sure the dog-monsters had fallen silent.
“Don’t suppose you have any other friends you might want to warn me about?” Floora asked.
Cal clenched his jaw, as if trying to stop the word escaping. Or, possibly to stop himself vomiting.
“Three.”
The little Floomfle launched herself a foot ahead of him on her wings and looked up in concern. “What, seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Are they all like the last one?”
Cal shook his head. “Some are worse.”
Floora blinked slowly, trying to process this. “Wow. You need to get a new social circle.”
She peered ahead in the direction they were walking. A pale yellow mist was now clinging to the ground thirty or forty feet in front of them. It would barely be up to Cal’s knees, which meant it would cover Floora completely.
“You think they’re going to be in here, too?” she asked. “Your other friends, I mean?”
“Four of them. Four new Hunters,” Cal said, sipping in a breath, then gagging it out. “Seems likely.”
Two paces and a hop over a boggy puddle later, a flag appeared in the mist ahead of them. It was not a particularly interesting flag—a red square roughly a foot along each side—but the way it just popped up out of nowhere made them both stop.
The fog itself was growing thicker, too. It was still confined to ground level, but it stretched all the way up to waist height now. Floora clambered up onto Cal’s back, then he stepped ahead into the mist.
It felt warm and sticky even through the suit, and seemed to cling to him as he crept through it.
“It’s a flag,” Floora whispered.
“I know,” said Cal.
Quick breath in, quick breath out.
“Is this normal?” he asked.
“What, magically appearing flags?”
“For the show, I mean. Does this happen a lot?”
Floora thought for a moment. “Not that I’ve ever noticed.”
“What about the… Bogholes, or whatever it’s called?”
“Belchpits,” said Floora. “Yeah, I’ve seen them before.”
“What can you tell me about them?” Cal asked.
Floora thought for a moment before responding. “Nothing.”
Cal tutted. “Great.”
He considered his available options. It wasn’t a long list.
“Should I touch the flag?” he wondered. “Maybe, if I get the flag, I win?”
“I doubt that,” said Floora. “Seems too easy.”
“Worth a shot though, right?” Cal ventured.
Floora made a little hmm sort of noise that suggested she thought it highly unlikely.
“I mean, sometimes they add challenge elements, I suppose,” she said. “Like, one time, this guy had to balance on a beam across a lava pit. The Hunter wasn’t allowed to touch him. Juggacrush, I think. If he made it, he got to move on.”
“And did he make it?” Cal asked.
“Not all of him, no,” said Floora. “And the rest didn’t get very far.”
“I still think I’m going to touch the flag,” said Cal. He glanced around across the fog, spat on his hands, then rubbed them together. “OK, here goes.”
He ran. It was only a short distance from where he started to where the metal flagpole had been stuck in the ground.
Cal clos
ed the gap in moments. He was almost at it, the words, “Well, this was easier than I expected,” already forming in his mouth, when a snarling ball of furry fury slammed into him, sending him sprawling into the fog.
For the first second or two of his flight, Cal could think only one thing: Sloorg.
One of the fonkers must’ve caught up and launched a stealth attack. The testicle-headed shizznods!
It was only when he twisted in the air and caught a glimpse of his attacker silhouetted against an enormous full moon that had upped and appeared from nowhere, that the truth hit him.
“Mi—” he managed to splutter, before he face-planted into bog-slime and the final ‘Z’ became a series of garbled bubbles.
Floora landed somewhere in the fog ahead of him with a thud and a splash and a yelp of pain. Spitting out the bog slime, Cal tried to call to her, but a clawed hand caught him by the back of the bodysuit and jerked him cleanly into the air.
The voice of the host bellowed down from on high as some hairy-looking holographic text appeared in the air behind Mizette’s head.
“I give you… Eeeeeeviscerator!”
On cue, Miz opened her mouth and let out a raw, animalistic roar that blew Cal’s hair back and cleared most of the slime from his face.
“My, my.” Cal gulped. “What big teeth you have.”
Thirty-Three
Cal had fully expected Mizette to bite and/or claw his face off, but instead she spun and body-slammed him onto the ground, driving him a full foot into the boggy surface.
Under normal circumstances he’d have objected, but considering the alternatives, he couldn’t really complain.
He lay there, wheezing in the warm filth, the mist concealing everything beyond the end of his own nose. He knew trying to reason with Miz would almost certainly be pointless. She could be a stubborn bedge at the best of times, let alone when she was under hypnotic psychic control.
He decided to try, anyway.
“So, uh, how you doing there, Miz?” he asked.
When he got no reply, he tentatively raised his head and tried to peer through the layer of fog. It was like trying to see through a solid object.
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