The bell dinged and the elevator doors opened. A hot gust of sulphuric air smacked their faces. Guardedly, they exited the compartment into a vast cave of yellow stone illuminated by large portable spotlights. Its ceiling dripped with glittering stalactites.
“What is this place?” said Milo.
He and Lucy ventured into the strange cavern. They appeared to be alone, though a row of hard hats and heavy-duty boots lay on a bench near the elevators.
The cave’s rocky walls, easily three storeys tall, were decorated from top to bottom with countless ancient-looking carvings: hieroglyphic symbols, images of plants and trees, stellar constellations, and an array of animals from a lowly banana slug to a rhinoceros to a spindly human figure holding a spear. Intermingled with the images were depictions of bizarre creatures with jumbled features. Some had animal bodies with human heads. Some had the reverse arrangement. Milo recognised some of the uncanny hybrids from the mythological creatures described in his cryptozoology book.
“It’s like the Siren Stone,” murmured Lucy. “But MEGA.” She spun round to take in the immensity of the find.
“Do you think the Pretenders made all this?” he asked. There was so much to see it was almost overwhelming. “How long have they been here?”
“Over a hundred years, for sure,” said Lucy. “The Other Mrs Stricks is at least that old.”
“Are you serious?” said Milo, alarmed. “How is that possible?”
“I dunno. How is any of this possible?” Lucy adjusted her glasses and peered, wide-eyed, at a six-foot carving of a man with the head of a buffalo and flames where his eyes should have been. “That’s exactly what I want to find out.”
Milo approached a knobbly stone column covered in carvings of hand, paw and claw prints. He traced one of the prints with a finger. Were any of these made by Thingus? He tried to count them all, but there were too many. “How many Pretenders are there?”
“Nine that I know of, including Thingus.”
“But this cave is insane,” said Milo, feeling overwhelmed. “Either the Pretenders are way older than a hundred—”
“Or there are more of them than we think there are,” said Lucy, eagerly taking down a note.
“Doesn’t any of this worry you?”
“They’ve been my neighbours my whole life, Fish. Why would they worry me?”
“Because there’s so much about them that we don’t know.”
“What worries me,” said Lucy, “is never finding out the Truth about any of this. If there’s one certainty in the universe, it’s that there’s TONS of things out there that we don’t know about. There’s so much that we’ll never even begin to imagine with our puny little brains! But it’s definitely out there, existing, whether we like it or not. What’s the point in being afraid of stuff just because you don’t understand it?”
“But what if the Pretenders are, like, evil?”
“Do you know of any species on the planet that’s all good or all evil?” Lucy retorted. “Is Thingus evil?”
“This is giving me a headache,” said Milo. He wrenched his attention away from the mysterious discovery. “Thingus isn’t here. We need to go find him.”
“I know,” Lucy whimpered. “But can you at least take some pictures of this place first? We may never get a chance to come back.”
“Good idea.” Milo patted his back pocket, then winced as he remembered. “Except my phone is at the bottom of Black Hole Lake.”
Lucy kicked a stalagmite. “Why do I never have access to a functioning camera at times like this?” She hastily sketched some of the glyphs in her notebook as Milo pulled her into the elevator.
He pressed the button to go one floor up, to “minus two”. By the process of elimination Thingus must surely be there. Milo’s stomach churned in anticipation. The doors opened.
The raucous din of human activity assaulted their senses. Milo and Lucy slammed their backs against the side wall of the elevator to hide from sight. Footsteps, voices and the ratchets and bangs of heavy machinery echoed around the hall.
“Did anyone see us?” whispered Lucy.
“If they did, I think we’d know.” Milo stuck his head though the open elevator door.
The hallway on this floor was wider than the first, with smooth cement walls and strip lighting. The clanking noises of industry were emanating from a series of large rooms on the left side of the corridor. Lucy and Milo slipped out into the hall.
“So,” Milo whispered, “what’s the plan to rescue Thingus?”
“There’s a plan?”
“No. That’s the problem.” They peeked through a window in the first door, upon which the words “Aerial Projectile Defence” had been painted in red letters.
Inside the room, several men and women in lab coats sat at a row of computers situated behind a thick panel of plexiglass. Beyond it, a small cannon-like apparatus sat twenty metres away from a wall covered in bullseyes. One of the scientists punched a series of commands into his computer, and, with a BANG, the cannon shot a glob of raw black sap, which hit one of the targets with a STHPLUNK. All the scientists in the room cheered.
Is this supposed to be a serious workplace?
Lucy pulled Milo’s elbow and led him down the corridor to the next test chamber. There, two scientists clad in heavily padded safety gear were dousing a crash-test dummy with buckets of sticky black sap. When the figure was covered from head to toe, they retreated to the sides of the room. A third scientist, wearing a soot-stained backpack made of metal canisters, stepped out into the centre of the chamber and shot a forceful jet of flame at the glazed mannequin: SHGKKKKXXXRRGHH!
“The employees at Nu Co. are allowed to use FLAMETHROWERS?” whispered Lucy.
“It certainly beats working in a cubicle,” said Milo.
He ducked down and urged Lucy along to the next room, where the door was ajar. Finger to his lips, he tiptoed to the edge of the door frame.
The right side of this laboratory housed dozens of stacked cages containing white mice. Each cage was mounted with a dispenser filled with unnaturally coloured food pellets: pink, gold and blue. On the left side of the room, in a pair of much larger cages, two chimpanzees jumped and hooted in agitation. A scientist with mussed hair and red sneakers crouched by the cage, his back to Milo. He repeatedly attempted to feed one of the chimps a banana dripping with golden syrup that looked like Nucralose. The angry ape kept slapping the banana away.
“All right, Bobo, we tried the easy way,” said the man. “Colleen!”
A statuesque ponytailed woman emerged from behind the mouse cages carrying a long tube with a rubber bag attached to one end.
Lucy clenched her fists, surely wanting to rush in and break open all the cage doors.
Without warning Milo felt something ruffle the back of his hair. Swatting at the air in confusion, he looked up to see a magpie flying low over his head and into the animal-testing room, where it perched on the chimps’ cage, startling the scientists.
“Are they keeping birds in the lab down the hall?” said the man, perplexed.
A second magpie, smaller than the first, swooped in and fluttered around his head, squawking like a demon.
“I’ll get the net, Fred,” said Colleen. She abruptly turned round and spotted Milo and Lucy in the open doorway. “Hey, there’s a couple of kids out there!” she exclaimed.
“Run!” yelled Milo.
He and Lucy barrelled down the hall, frantically checking each room they passed for any sign of Thingus. Angry shouting reverberated around the corridor behind them.
RAAAAAAXXXXXAAGHH! The muffled sound of a monstrous inhuman howl sounded further down the tunnel.
There he is!
Milo raced down the corridor at top speed, finally reaching a pair of swinging double doors, the source of the bellowing wail.
“I’m coming, Thingus!” cried Milo.
“Wait!” yelled Lucy. “We don’t know what’s in there!”
But there was no tim
e left for hesitation. Heroically, Milo ploughed through the doors, Lucy at his heels.
Substance Nu-791
The double doors swung shut behind Lucy as she slid to a halt next to Milo, her hiking boots screeching on the cement floor. They had entered a wide windowless room lined with buzzing and burbling experimental equipment. This place is a mad scientist’s wildest dream.
At the far end of the chamber, Mr Fisher stood amongst half a dozen scientists and tactically suited security officers all staring in shock at the kids’ sudden appearance. The group was crowded around the room’s scientific centrepiece: a cylindrical glass tank as big as an elephant, bolted to the floor and sealed at the top with a metal cap. Inside, a jet-black tentacled being floated in effervescent liquid, its listless dolphin-sized body covered in dozens of clear tubes and colourful electrodes.
Lucy could sense the creature’s anguish from where she stood. What have they done to you, Thingus?
Mr Fisher returned his son’s panicked glare. “How did you get down here?” he demanded.
“Let him go,” Milo pleaded.
Hearing the sound of Milo’s voice, Thingus’s yellow eyes flew open in his catfish face. He sloshed urgently against the glass, the bubbly water churning around him. Milo ran towards the tank, but his father blocked his way.
Stringy Dum and squat Dummer emerged from behind the vessel, marching in lockstep towards Milo and Lucy. Fisher raised his hand and the goons stopped, awaiting his signal.
Fisher bowed his head. “Milo, you can’t possibly expect me to release this monster.”
“He’s not a monster,” said Lucy. “Thingus is awesome. And smarter than you, probably.”
“He’s my friend, Dad,” said Milo. “Please.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Fisher. “This creature is far better off in a secure lab than out there, endangering the community.”
“You’re the one who’s dangerous,” Lucy shot back, “with your deranged tests and experiments.”
One of the scientists stepped forward, a petite woman with a tight black bun, red cat-eye glasses gracing her angular face.
Lucy’s lip curled. Doctor Quittan.
“If we can put the children back in their cribs now, Richard,” said Quittan, “the work must continue.” She was carrying a sizable syringe.
Quittan was the head of chemical research at Nu Co. Lucy had previously encountered her at the Par-T in Da Pines carnival (ugh), and again at the factory. She remembered the woman as being overly fascinated by horrific bodily transformations and not especially keen on unannounced guests. She and Doctor Vink were the leaders of Fisher’s torturous endeavours, and had probably been voted “Most Likely to Commit War Crimes’” in their high-school yearbooks.
Turning on her stiletto heel, Quittan approached Thingus’s prison tank and lifted a cover to reveal a panel at the side.
“Introducing Substance Nu-791.” She drove the needle into the rubber injection site. A pale blue liquid travelled slowly through a thick intravenous tube and into Thingus’s torso.
The sky-blue substance appeared to have the opposite effect of the pink goo. Thingus’s body began to change uncontrollably: his eight limbs melted together into a snake-like, singular form, then split into two stork-like legs, which thickened and split once more to form four mammalian appendages. Simultaneously, his head and neck lengthened and then shrank, widened, then winnowed. The other scientists took notes as the creature thrashed and wailed.
“Stop it,” Milo begged Quittan. “You’re hurting him!”
Doctor Quittan shot Fisher a look of disgust, imploring him to silence the boy.
Fisher snapped his fingers for Dum and Dummer to advance.
Lucy and Milo ran in different directions. Their only hope was to break Thingus out of the oversized vessel before he was irreparably harmed.
Dummer, the shorter of the goons and faster than he looked, nabbed Lucy by the elbow and pinned her arms behind her back. Milo zagged away but Dum, with a sinister grin, caught him by the collar and held him fast.
Lucy struggled to free herself as Thingus’s anguished body morphed again and again, until finally his spasms ceased. The poor creature now had the body of a small deer, the head of an exotic lizard, and giant albatross wings that floated limply in the water. Thingus’s scaly forehead was pressed against the glass, his mouth open in a soundless cry for help.
“What are you doing to him?” said Milo, straining against Dum’s grip.
“It was Richard’s ingenious idea,” said Quittan, nodding at Fisher. “We’ve been developing ways to use the deviant species’ own biological morphology to incapacitate it.”
“Huh?” said Lucy.
“We’re stopping the creatures from transforming at will,” said a younger ginger-haired scientist. “The pink stuff prevents the creature from changing shape, and the blue stuff causes it to change uncontrollably.” He tapped his clipboard with his pen. “Pretty neat, huh?”
“That’s horrible,” Lucy growled.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the man insisted. “This creature doesn’t feel pain the same way we do.”
I’ll bet that’s what you dillweeds say about the chimps, too.
“Of course he does,” said Milo. “Just look at him! He’s in agony.”
Fisher shook his head. “You don’t know anything about this creature.”
“Do you?” said Milo.
“I know it’s not like us.” Fisher motioned to his flunkies.
Dummer dragged Lucy towards the entrance as she kicked his shins in protest. Dum marched Milo to a chair by the door and forced him to sit. Red-faced, the boy tried to stand, but he was pushed back down decisively.
Mr Fisher approached his son. “Milo,” he said, “I’ve been trying to protect you by keeping you out of all this, but I see now that that was a mistake. I think it’s time you learned the truth about Sticky Pines.”
Milo exchanged a glance with Lucy, who was dangling indignantly under Dummer’s stinky armpit.
Fisher bent down, his hands on his knees. “That creature over there is not alone,” he said, gravely. “You may find this hard to believe, but some of the people in this town are not what they seem. Milo, they’re not human.”
“Yeah. We already know that,” said Lucy, rolling her eyes.
“Dad, listen to me,” said Milo. “Thingus isn’t a threat to anyone. I’ve spent every day with him for the past few weeks. He’s no different from me or Lucy. You can’t just torture him. Please, Dad, let him go.”
“These monsters are not our friends,” said Fisher. “They’ve attacked my machines.”
“They just wanna stop you from destroying them,” said Lucy. She tried to wriggle out of Dummer’s grasp, but he twisted her arm until she doubled over in pain.
Ignoring her, Fisher focused on his son. “That creature over there is more than just a threat.”
“What do you mean?” asked Milo.
“It’s an opportunity.” Fisher gestured to the prison tank with pride. “This species has abilities beyond what anyone thought biologically possible. What we learn from it could result in the birth of a new way of life for all mankind.”
Here we go. Lucy had heard Fisher ramble on like this before. He couched his ambition in romantic notions of progress and discovery, but she could see through it: the man just wanted to make money. He may as well have dollar signs for eyes. When she looked over to Milo, though, he seemed more confused than ever.
Thingus cried out as Quittan approached his tank with another syringe filled with the nasty blue substance.
Milo snapped out of his bewilderment. “Stop hurting him!” he yelled.
The lights flickered, then dimmed as an alarm began to blare. WOMP! WOMP! WOMP!
“What’s this now?” muttered Fisher.
Dummer’s grip on Lucy loosened.
She seized her chance and stomped on his foot, then twisted out of his reach. The flustered goon swiped at thin air, missing her by a hair.
Before Dummer could chase her, his attention was diverted by the sound of loud voices in the hallway and an odd banging that sounded like… What is that, hoofbeats? The security duo booked it out into the hall, panicked shouting filling the room as the doors swung closed behind them.
Lucy sprinted towards Thingus. The ginger-haired scientist scrambled out of her way as she leapt in the air and threw a flying kick at the tank, hitting it with a solid THONK, but failing to break the thick glass. She slid to the ground, her knee aching. Cripesauce.
Fumbling for her glasses, which had fallen on the floor, Lucy was confronted by a pair of pointy leopard-print shoes.
“Nice try,” said Quittan, looking smug. “But the glass is fortified.”
The ceiling sprinkler system activated and a second alarm began to blare.
Lucy slipped on her glasses. “Who says I’m done trying?”
“Scotty, seize the girl,” Quittan commanded.
The red-haired scientist looked around as if unsure she was speaking to him. He half-heartedly reached for Lucy. Too fast to be caught, she darted round the tank, looking for another way to break the vessel.
Energised, Thingus squealed, flapping his albatross wings and twisting against the tubes embedded in his furry torso.
“Can somebody please get the girl away from the asset?” yelled Fisher, holding Milo in place.
CLONK! The lab doors swung inwards as Dum ran into the room, swatting at a magpie with iridescent teal wings that was pecking at his head.
Lucy recognised it as one of the birds that had invaded the animal-testing room. That’s not one of Nu Co.’s test subjects, she realised, that’s a Pretender!
“Get it off me! Get it off,” yelled Dum.
A puddle of black gelatinous goo trickled under the still swinging doors, seeming to move of its own accord. It congealed and transformed into a second larger magpie with a black head and white chest. The magpie flapped its wings and darted up to the ceiling, then dive-bombed Quittan.
The doctor grabbed an IV stand and tried to bat the bird away.
The Thing At Black Hole Lake Page 13