by Griffith, KF
“So you two were on lobby duty, then? Lucky you,” the other voice said. “We haven’t had a customer in ages. What did they need? Let me guess . . . a form to reinstate their Ogreball license? That’s what it was last time. You think we’d have more customers coming in for that, since so many licenses get revoked.”
“Nothing as exciting as that,” said Slipknock. “It was someone looking for directions to the Magicworks factory. You’d think they’d be able to find a giant building with flame coming out of its smokestacks without much trouble, wouldn’t you?”
They all laughed.
“Well, I’d better be on my way,” said the voice.
“Tell everyone in Documents and Copies we said hello,” said Grelda.
“Will do,” said the voice.
The other elevator cage clanked back to life and rattled away. I could hear Grelda turn the knob and flip the switch on our cage, and we began to descend slowly.
“Can I come out now?” I asked.
“Not until we get to the Sciences level,” said Grelda. “Now that we know that there might be something going on, we need to do some research.”
We finally stopped descending, and I heard Grelda step out of the cage. “The coast is clear.”
Slipknock lifted his robe up and I scurried out from under him, off the elevator, and into a dimly lit hallway.
“This way,” said Grelda. She trotted down the hallway toward a big round door that looked like a bank vault. Above the door a sign read: Sciences Laboratories – Authorized Personnel Only!
She pulled a big brass key out of her robe, opened the door, and peeked inside. “Looks clear.”
We slipped through, and she pulled the heavy door behind her. The door closed with a clang followed by a series metallic thumps as the security tumblers slotted back into place.
“Now, this is where it gets tricky,” she said.
“This section is usually pretty busy,” said Slipknock. “We’ll need to be careful.”
“What exactly do they do down here?” I asked.
“This is where they manage everything to do with the Sciences,” he said.
Grelda hustled down the hall ahead of us. “In there they work on flogiston related projects,” She pointed at a door that had burn marks around its doorframe and a sign that read: DANGER! FLOGISTON IN USE! We hurried after her.
“And in there, they do research on every type of monster – except ogres – ogres are down the next hall to the right. We ogres have our own wing.” We passed a set of double doors with a sign that read: MONSTROZOOLOGY.
“So what exactly are we doing down here?” I asked.
“We need to test you to see if what you say is true,” said Slipknock. “To see where you come from.”
“Test me how?”
“There’s a machine down here called a revealerator that provides information about the nature and origin of any object you place inside it,” said Grelda, “but its super top secret.”
“It’s in the Special Investigations Lab,” said Slipknock. “Down this hall and to the left.” “We have the proper security clearance to get in the lab, but neither one of us has ever used the revealerator before,” said Grelda.
“Is that going to be a problem?” I asked. They glanced at each other.
“Let’s hope not,” said Slipknock.
“To be honest,” said Grelda, “I don’t think anyone has ever used it on something that was . . . alive.”
I stopped. “You’re kidding, right?” They both stopped with me.
Grelda put her hand on my shoulder. “Look, if what you’re saying is true . . . .”
“It is.”
“Then whatever it is that’s going on here is outside of anything we’ve ever heard of before,” she said. “That means either somebody’s up to something that they shouldn’t be up to . . . .”
“And that would be very, very bad,” said Slipknock.
“Or something totally unprecedented has happened,” she finished.
“And that could be either very good or very bad,” said Slipknock. “Depending on exactly what is going on.”
“Which you can only figure out by testing me in your revealerator thingie?”
“Exactly!” they both said together.
Just then we heard a door open followed by the sound of footsteps and laughter. It came from around the corner just ahead of us to the right. Grelda and Slipknock’s eyes got wide. They looked around frantically.
“We’ll never make it to the Special Investigations Lab without being seen,” said Grelda.
“Maybe we should make a dash for it,” said Slipknock. “The hallway’s just ahead to the left. I think we could make it.
“We can’t. They’ll see us,” she said. “It’s too far.”
“What about in here?” I asked.
“In the janitor’s closet?” said Slipnock.
The approaching voices sounded like they were so close that they’d turn the corner any second.
“Quick! Get in!” I pulled the door open and dragged Grelda in behind me. Slipknock scrambled in behind us pulling the door closed behind him.
There was no light in the closet, but light from the hallway filtered in through the grimy glass window. I could read the word JANITOR backwards through the smudges and smears on the glass. I guess the janitor didn’t clean his own windows.
We huddled together listening to the footsteps as they approached our hiding place. Shadows fell across the glass as the ogres walked past us. Slipknock gripped my arm tightly.
“Shhhhhh!” whispered Grelda.
The shadows passed, and the sound of footsteps faded. “That was close,” whispered Slipknock.
“Too close,” said Grelda.
My eyes had never left the door, so I was looking right at the window when a shadow fell across the glass from the direction that the ogres in the hallway had just gone.
The doorknob to the door turned from the outside.
Chapter 10: Caught
The door swung open, and there stood an ogre wearing a dirty white lab coat. He had a single gadget over his left eye – kind of like a high-tech goggle lens combined with an eye patch – and he had an instrument that looked like a stethoscope wrapped over his shoulders and around his neck. He wasn’t nearly as old as Grelda and Slipknock, and he seemed nervous.
“Grelda? Slipknock? What are you doing hiding in a janitor’s closet? I thought I heard the door close just before we came around the corner, and I needed to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.” He looked at me. “And is that a child?”
“Squinteye! We’re so glad it’s you!” said Slipknock.
“Yes!” said Grelda. “Please do come inside.” She pulled him into the closet with us.
“Can we trust you?” she asked. “Of course we can.” She turned to look at me. “Squinteye is the most promising young scientists we’ve seen here at B.O.R.I.A.L. in a generation. We’ve worked on projects with him before. He’s a good ogre.”
Squinteye seemed flattered. “Why, thank you.”
“We find ourselves in a bit of pinch,” said Grelda. “This young ogre – his name is . . . .”
“Grady Burr,” I said.
“Grady Burr?” they said together.
“Grady Burr?” said Squinteye. “What kind of name is Grady Burr?”
“I was telling these two that I’m not from here, not from . . . Monstralium. Where I’m from people have different kinds of names. We have a first name, mine’s Grady. And we have a last name – a family name – mine’s Burr.”
“That’s the oddest thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Squinteye. “Tell me more.” He seemed genuinely fascinated.
I went through the whole explanation for him about how there are no ogres where I come from, and how our skin isn’t just green, and how the men have hair, not just the women. All three of them looked at me like I was from Mars.
“I’m not making this up!” I said.
“Of course you aren’t
,” said Grelda. “It’s just that it all sounds so strange. And you have no idea how you got here?”
“None,” I said. “I just want to get back home, that’s all. I thought you B.O.R.I.A.L. folks might be able to help me.”
The three of them huddled together and whispered back and forth while I stood there. After a short debate, they pulled away from each other and turned to face me.
“Squinteye has agreed to help us,” said Grelda. “He’s operated the revealerator before.”
“And I’m dying to get to the bottom of this,” he said tapping his fingers together in front of his face. He was giddy. “Science is such an amazing thing! Always new discoveries! Always new challenges!”
He turned and popped open the door. “Let me go find an equipment cart to hide Grady Burr in. I’ll be right back.” With that he dashed out of the closet and hurried down the hall.
“Our mission will be considerably easier with his help,” said Slipknock.
“It certainly will,” said Grelda.
“I’m going to have to ride inside that equipment cart he was talking about, right?” I said.
“I’m afraid so,” said Grelda. “But it will only be for a short while.”
“On the bright side,” said Slipknock, “you won’t have to be under anyone’s robe.”
I rolled my eyes.
Chapter 11: In The Laborartory
I climbed out of the equipment cart and stood up. We were inside a large room filled with machines of every size and shape, rusty pipes, and dangling, sparking wires. There was steam leaking out of a few of the pipes overhead, and there were tubes and beakers filled with bubbling liquids in a rainbow of glowing colors arranged along the walls. Most of the machines were covered with so many dials and meters, knobs and levers that they would have made the maddest of mad scientists happy.
“Welcome to Special Investigations, Laboratory D15,” said Grelda as she spread her arms wide.
“I have to admit, this looks pretty cool!” I said.
Slipknock was locking the laboratory doors, and Squinteye was dragging a large contraption that looked like a small refrigerator inside of a cage on wheels into the center of the room.
Grelda pushed the equipment cart out of the way and pulled a couple of metal pinwheels with long handles out of a nearby cabinet. “These are our calibrators, they’ll help us keep the revealerator from going out of phase,” she said. “Here.” She handed them to me.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” I waved them around like 4th of July sparklers.
Before she could answer me, Squinteye parked the cage directly in front of me. “This is the revealerator.” He kicked a lever at the base of the thing and the wheels locked into place. “That should keep it from moving around unnecessarily.”
He flipped up a latch and pulled the door open. The door was about the size of a door on a big washing machine. It was more of a hatch, really. He indicated that he wanted me to climb in.
“You’re not serious,” I said. “You want me to get inside that thing?”
“With your calibrators, please,” he said. He waved his hands around like he was holding the pinwheels, like I had just done.
Slipknock dragged over a pair of giant cables and attached them to the back of the revealerator. “There’s your power.”
Grelda joined us. She pulled down a lever on the side of the thing, and it began to hum immediately. Lights blinked on and off on the control panel, and the familiar blue glow of flogiston shone from inside the chamber.
“Now, there’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “Even though we’ve never done this on a live test subject,” she turned to look at Slipknock and Squinteye, who both shook their heads from side to side, “there’s nothing about the testing process itself that would cause you any harm.”
“You’re sure?” I Asked.
“Absolutely,” she said.
“Besides,” said Squinteye, “if you really want to get back home, this may be your only way to get a clue about what really happened.”
“You’ve got a point there,” I said.
I climbed into the hatch and turned back around to face the opening. There wasn’t much space inside, so I had to squat down to keep from banging my head on the ceiling of the chamber.
“Now, hold your calibrators up like this,” said Slipknock. He pretended to hold each one of the pinwheels up about chest high and shoulder width apart.
I did the same.
“That’s perfect,” said Grelda. She must have been adjusting something because the hum started to get really loud.
“We’re going to close the door,” said Squinteye. “The test should only take a few seconds. Don’t worry!” He was shouting now, so that I could hear him above the hum, which had turned into a roar.
Slipknock bent down close to the door and shouted, “There will be a bright flash, and then it’ll be over. Okay?” He gave me the thumbs up sign.
“Okay.” I yelled back at him. He closed the hatch.
I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but I knew I needed to keep holding up the calibrators. The roar became deafening, and the pinwheels suddenly started spinning in opposite directions really fast. The flogiston light got so bright that I had to close my eyes. But, even with my eyes squeezed shut tightly, I still saw the flash. It felt really hot for a second, and then everything went dark.
The door swung open and light flooded in. Slipknock extended his hand to help me crawl out of the chamber. “Everything alright?”
“As far as I can tell,” I said. I stepped all the way out and handed the pinwheels back to Grelda.
They went through the process of shutting everything down and putting all the equipment back in its place.
“So, what do we know now?” I asked.
“We won’t know anything for at least a few days,” said Grelda. “We’ve got to take this little thing and develop it.” She waggled a small metal cylinder to show me what she was talking about.
“There’s an element inside that cylinder that records the data from the test, but we have to dip it in a bath of chemical solutions and allow it to develop before we can actually see the data,” said Slipknock.
“I could handle that for you,” said Squinteye. He reached for the cylinder.
“You don’t need to bother yourself, my friend,” said Grelda. “You’ve already done us a huge favor.” She patted him on the arm.
“Yes, thank you,” said Slipknock. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“It was my pleasure,” said Squinteye. He adjusted his goggle. “I am very eager to see the results, though. Promise me you’ll let me know as soon as it’s developed.”
“Of course,” said Grelda. “Now, we need to get Grady Burr out of here without being discovered.”
It was a lot easier getting out than getting in. Squinteye took us to an abandoned part of the Sciences level and showed us an air supply duct that I used to crawl up and out into an alley at the back of the building. The duct was stinky and dirty, but it did the trick. Once I crawled out, I fastened the grate back onto the vent and walked out of the alley and back into the busy streets of Slimewater.
Chapter 12: The Plan
I walked into the secret hideout beneath the Flaming Goat and looked up to see Elganbok in a leather harness dangling from a chain. He was waving his arms frantically and shouting. The more he waved his arms, the more wildly he swung around. He looked like he was going to be sick.
“If you don’t get me down right now, I’m gonna barf on all of you!” he shouted.
There was a small group of ogres scattered around the warehouse working on preparations for the heist. Some of them were testing equipment, others were cobbling together uniforms, and some were practicing their rope climbing skills. They had all stopped their various tasks and were watching with glee as Elganbok bounced and swung at the end of his chain.
Baerwald stood on the floor directly beneath Elganbok. He struggled to keep his grip on
Elganbok’s chain. “Stop moving around so much,” said Baerwald. “I won’t be able to hang on much longer if you . . . .”
But it was too late. Just as he swung over the ogres that were testing the equipment, Elganbok let loose. He hurled. It was a massive amount of vomit, way more liquid than I thought a dwarf could possibly hold inside him.
The ogres that were testing the equipment were drenched. Seeing their comrades standing there covered in dwarf vomit made every other ogre in the warehouse roar with laughter. Even Baerwald chuckled.
“Swing me around so that I can hit Knucklewort next,” said Elganbok. “I think I’ve got a little more left in me.” He was laughing as he wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
The laughing ogres all scrambled for cover.
Brunda waddled out onto the floor with a stack of towels and handed them to the dripping ogres. She looked up at Elganbok and said, “If you do that again, I’m gonna throw you in the canal.”
“But this is kind of fun,” said Elganbok. He was moving his arms and kicking his feet like he was trying to swim in the air to a spot above the ogres working on the uniforms.
Brunda finished passing out towels and turned to face Baerwald. “I’ve been watching him up there, and I’d say that he’s not very suited to working from above.”
“I tried to tell everybody that,” Elganbok said. He had stopped flapping around, so he was barely swinging at all now. His arms dangled at his sides. “But I’m the little guy, right? So it’s gotta be me hangin’ up here because I’m the lightest, right?”
“I’m probably the most comfortable working from high places,” said Baerwald. “It should probably be me doing it.”
“And who’s gonna hold you?” asked Brunda. She walked over to a miniature model of the Trophy Hall. “Droppin’ down into the courtyard is the easiest way into the place, but we’d need an entire crew to lower you. You’re just too big.”
“Couldn’t you use a hoist of some kind?” I walked over to join them at the miniature model. “I mean, if you could set up some kind of rig on one side of the open space, it would only take a couple of you to lower him down and pull him back up, right?”