Chapter 4: Fire in the Hole
Soon, they were all seated around the table, all except Cam, who once again sat apart from the others at a computer bank. She no longer needed an awkward headset: now she talked to the computer simply by using her mind.
“How are you doing, Cam?” Mouse asked as she lapped her tea.
“Good,” Cam said as she sat with her eyes closed and her fingers to her temples. “I’ve memorized about a gigabyte from your database.”
“Stop there for today,” said Finally as she scratched herself. “If you take too much at once, you can damage your brain. You need to sleep a good eight hours before you do that again.”
Cam nodded once and joined the others at the table, dropping heavily into a chair. She snatched up a large stack of Mouse’s toast and heaped butter onto the first slice. “I am starving.”
Finally nodded and smiled. “Your brain is going to consume a lot of calories now. All of you will require a lot of calories. So eat up.” She inclined her head toward the computers. “Speaking of which, the matter transmutation system has a large recipe database, so order anything you like.”
Judy Moody lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Anything? Then I want a bowl of Mood Flakes.”
The computers clacked and hummed. A trapdoor opened in the top of the table and disgorged a bowl heaped with cereal bathed in milk.
“Double rare!” whispered Judy. She pulled the bowl to herself.
Nancy frowned. “Mood Flakes?”
Judy looked up, spoon poised halfway to her mouth. “Yeah, you know. They predict your mood. If the milk turns pink, it means I’ll have a good mood today.”
“Your milk’s turning brown. What does that mean?”
Judy stared down at her bowl. “Chocolate,” she said with a shrug, and then she dug in.
Cam ordered bacon and eggs with orange juice. Nancy ordered cold pizza and tea, and she also asked the computer for cloth napkins so the meal would be civilized. Junie B., clearly excited by the prospect, ordered pizza for breakfast as well. Amelia ordered waffles and then confounded everyone when she asked if waffles were pancakes that had trouble making decisions.
When her food appeared, Amelia lowered her eyes and quietly said grace. Nancy’s family wasn’t particularly religious, but she knew to wait politely until Amelia finished.
When Nancy finally bit into her slice of extra cheese with pepperoni, Judy chuckled. “Hey, fancy girl, I’m surprised you didn’t ask for something like caviar or patty fast grass.”
Nancy chewed, swallowed, dabbed her lips with a napkin, and replied, “It’s pâté foie gras, Judy, and I’ve never had it. They have to do awful things to geese to make it.”
“What’s with you and all the fancy stuff, anyway?”
“I like it, that’s all. What’s with you and not combing your hair?”
Judy snorted.
“Not that I could do much with my hair today either,” Nancy added with a grumble as she ate.
Junie B. gazed up at Nancy’s head and kicked her feet a few times before she whispered, “I like your hair. It looks like your head’s on fire.”
With her mouth full of cereal, Judy burst out laughing again. She tipped her head back and slammed a fist into the table, making the dishes rattle.
“It’s not black,” Junie B. continued, “but it’s curly and still pretty.” Putting a hand to her mouth and leaning toward Nancy as if she were revealing a great confidence, she added, “Black and curly is my favorite kind of head.”
Nancy smiled. “My best friend Bree has black and curly hair.”
“Ah,” said Junie B. with a solemn nod, “I see that you also are a girl of taste.”
The conversation ceased as the kids ate. Nancy realized she was famished: she devoured five slices and was still hungry, though she was as self-conscious eating in front of the others as she had been showering in front of Judy; she was, after all, the only girl present who was carrying extra fat. Maybe she should try to be a little more ladylike about her diet.
Halfway through her sixth slice, she paused and stared down at her plate. Tears stung her eyes. For the second time, in the midst of everything and with all the strange happenings, she realized she had forgotten about her sister.
Cam reached across the table and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”
Nancy shook her head and swallowed. She mumbled for a moment to make sure her voice wouldn’t break, and then she said, “Cam, do you … um, do you have brothers or sisters …?”
Cam smiled. “One of each. Twins. They were born on Valentine’s Day.”
“Ooh la la! Really?” Valentine’s was Nancy’s favorite holiday.
“Yes,” Cam said, her smile fading and her stony expression returning. “Pink Vicious took them both.”
She withdrew her hand and returned to her bacon and eggs. As she dug into a bacon strip with knife and fork, she added, “We’ll get your sister back, Nancy. I promise. We’ll get back everyone’s brothers and sisters, safe and sound.” She smiled again, but only briefly. “I’ve solved thirty-three mysteries. I always get my man.”
Judy grunted, her eyebrows together in a scowl.
A light on the console blinked. Mouse lithely hopped over to it and flipped several switches. “We’re getting a signal from Alpha. It’s encrypted.”
“Better patch it through,” Finally replied.
A screen brightened, flickered, and resolved into an image of Mrs. DeVine’s seamed and dignified face. Nancy choked for a moment on a chunk of crust and hastily washed it down with tea.
“You’re looking well,” Finally said as she hopped into a seat beside Mouse.
Mrs. DeVine smiled thinly. “I’ve buried three husbands, and I’ll bury all of you. It will take time to complete the repairs, of course, but I am at least functional. How are our charges?”
“As well as you could expect,” Finally replied. “They’re eating now.”
“I’m afraid this will have to be a working breakfast, then,” said DeVine. “Have you briefed them?”
“Not yet,” Mouse answered.
“My family has a rule against calls during meals,” Nancy muttered, but she said it only faintly.
Another screen flickered to life, showing an image of Pink Vicious, a sweet little girl in a pink dress, with a golden crown on her head. Text scrolled up the screen next to her picture.
“Pink Vicious has a brother,” said DeVine, “a little boy about Junie B.’s age, by the name of Peter. As far as we’ve been able to tell, he’s not infected. Nonetheless, he is loyal and dedicated to his older sister.”
A picture of a little boy in a blue beanie cap replaced the picture of Pink.
Nancy suddenly wasn’t hungry. She gave up on the pizza, but quietly sipped her tea, being sure to keep her pinkie extended. She noticed her fingers trembling.
“Have you told them about the beanstalk?” DeVine asked.
Mouse shook her head and turned in her chair to face the girls. “Children,” he said, “this is hard to explain because we don’t understand it ourselves, but even before the mind virus took her, Pinkalicious had certain … well, powers, powers we admit we do not understand and that appear to be outside the purview of our science.”
Nancy rubbed her chin and thought. She didn’t used to believe in magic, but then again, she didn’t used to believe in aliens, either.
Amelia swallowed a bite of her waffles, put a finger to her cheek, and gazed at the ceiling as she said thoughtfully, “I’ve petted a lot of cats when I could see them—so I suppose I’ve had a pretty good purr view.”
Judy snorted and Junie B. giggled. Amelia merely looked back and forth between them, an uncomprehending frown on her face.
Mouse glanced sidelong at Finally and licked her paw. Finally briefly bared her teeth and growled in reply.
On the monitor, Mrs. DeVine cleared her throat. “Parallax, Apsides, please. Now is not the time for your little argument about your charges. I can’t have you two fighting like cats and dogs—”
“What else would they fight like?” Amelia asked, her brow crumpled in confusion.
Finally scowled, and Mouse looked decidedly smug.
Junie B. burst into loud laughter. “Oh, she’s a laugh a minute, I tell you!” she shouted. “I love this guy!”
Amelia just blinked, her confused look deepening.
DeVine cleared her throat again, more insistently. “The beanstalk—”
“Right,” said Mouse, lowering her paw. “Listen, kids, we believe Pink Vicious possesses a powerful biological weapon. Several months ago, before she was infected, she created a wand that would grant her wishes—though we don’t know how she did it. She used it to clean a public park of all its trash. That burst of what we can only call magic destroyed her wand … but it also created a collection of seeds that she calls the Emeraldlicious.”
“We have one here,” said Finally. She pressed a button, and the trapdoor in the table opened again, disgorging a large, green seed with a tough hide. It was the size of a plum and the shape of an almond.
Nancy bent down and peered at it.
Judy slurped the brown milk out of her bowl. “Looks boring—”
“This one is benign,” said DeVine. “Originally, Pinkalicious was going to use these seeds to turn the Earth green—”
Amelia shook her head and crossed her arms. “Turning the Earth green doesn’t sound much nicer than turning it pink—”
DeVine smiled. “No, Amelia, I mean she was going to use the seeds to help trees and flowers grow. The Emeraldlicious has a remarkable ability to detoxify soil and speed the growth rate of vegetation.”
Judy dropped her bowl to the table with a loud thunk. The seed bounced. “You mean she wanted to save the rainforest?”
DeVine nodded. “You could say that.”
Judy rubbed her chin. “I like this Pinkalicious. I saved the rainforest once, and I got an award and everything. I didn’t even get in trouble for stealing everybody’s pencils.”
A knot of irritation tightened in Nancy’s stomach. She gripped the table and hissed, “Judy! Stealing is wrong!”
Judy shrugged. “But I did it to save the rainforest.”
“It’s still wrong!”
DeVine cleared her throat again, now quite loudly. “We believe Pink Vicious is converting the Emeraldlicious into a bioweapon. The prototype is probably what she tested in Slovakia.”
“Her brother has his own kind of power,” said Mouse. “Peter once constructed a tower that reached into the stratosphere—and he built it out of toy blocks. Again, we don’t know how he did it. He’s the one who built Pink’s robot army, and he recently finished constructing her space elevator.”
Amelia’s face brightened. “Is that … is that an elevator that goes all the way to space?”
Nancy smiled. “Amelia,” she said quietly, “I’m sure that’s not it.”
“Actually,” Finally replied, “it is.”
“Sacré bleu!” cried Nancy.
Amelia beamed.
“It’s true,” said DeVine. “It’s a cable reaching from Earth into space. At its far end is a counterweight. Think about spinning a yo-yo over your head: it’s the same principle, but on a much larger scale.”
Nancy shivered. She felt a drop of sweat trickle down her back.
After Mouse threw another switch, they were looking at a picture of a vast stretch of tall, stately trees and a bright blue sky mottled with layers of puffy white clouds. In the distance, a thin black line, like a mark made by a pen and straightedge, stretched up into the air.
“Space elevators have to be constructed at the equator,” said Mouse. “Peter chose to build his in the Congo River Basin.”
Judy raised her eyebrows, and Nancy saw her fingers shake. “We’re going to the rainforest?” Judy whispered. Her voice came out as a squeak.
Mouse smiled. “Yes, Judy. We’re going to the rainforest—and then we’re going above it. Pink Vicious, we believe, has her headquarters 35,786 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, which is the height of geostationary orbit. She’s probably planning to deploy the Emeraldlicious from there.”
“You’ll be weightless when you arrive,” Finally added. “But to get there at all, you’ll have to fight your way through the tower at the elevator’s base. The tower is a hundred stories tall, and it’s teeming both with Peter’s robots and Pink’s biotroopers.”
Nancy swallowed loudly.
“Before we get there,” said Mouse as she licked her paw, “we’ll put you through training. We’ll arrive at Base Delta in Africa in another day, so you’ll need to work fast.”
“How are we getting there by train?” Nancy asked. “You can’t take a train from America to Africa.”
Finally smiled. “You can take this one.”
“We have tunnels throughout the globe,” said Mrs. DeVine. You’re currently traveling on the most direct route you can take—through the Earth’s mantle.”
“Say what?” cried Nancy.
“Our tunnels are made of an ablative nano-carbon,” said Finally. “They can withstand the heat and pressure, though we must constantly rebuild their exteriors. We can’t tunnel through the core because it’s rotating, but the mantle gives us comparatively little trouble.”
“How far underground are we?” Judy asked.
Mouse shrugged. “About 1,600 miles.”
“Rare!”
“We’ve already passed by the outer core,” Mouse continued. “We’re rising now.”
“In any case,” said DeVine, “it’s imperative that you master your powers thoroughly before you confront Pink Vicious. You must secure the Emeraldlicious and destroy Peter’s tower, no matter the cost—”
As she spoke, her voice turned low and scratchy, and a black and white static crawled across the screen.
Finally frowned and turned a knob. “DeVine? You’re breaking up—”
“Something’s jamming our signal,” Mouse muttered as she slapped a pair of headphones over her ears and pressed several buttons.
Cam winced and touched her head.
Nancy glanced at her. “Are you—?”
“I’m losing contact with the system,” Cam muttered. “Something’s wrong.”
All the screens on the computer bank went dark, but they quickly lit up again, each one now displaying the face of a horse with a creamy white coat, a straw-colored mane, and a bright, golden horn jutting from its forehead.
The horse grinned and neighed softly.
Mouse and Finally jumped to their feet. “Goldilicious!” they both shouted.
“Augh!” cried Junie B. as she fell out of her chair and scrabbled backwards across the carpet. “It’s a pony! Ponies can stomple you and kill you to death!”
“Good morning, Apsides, Parallax,” the unicorn said. “You’re certainly looking well—though not for much longer.”
The unicorn’s eyes roamed the room. For a moment, they landed on Nancy.
Nancy shivered.
“What’s this,” the unicorn sneered, “the Red-Headed League? Apsides, Parallax, surely you don’t think you can stop my mistress with this handful of mere children!”
“Your mistress will destroy this world!” Finally barked. “Don’t you care? Don’t you remember a time when you were a creature of goodness and light—?”
“I was a figment, a fancy!” Goldilicious shouted back. “Pinkalicious could only imagine me, but Pink Vicious gave me life! I would do anything for her!”
“You’re mad!” shouted Finally.
The girls were on their feet, their breakfasts forgotten. Each of them looked around uncertainly, unsure what to do. Nancy thought for a moment of raising her hand and transforming—but she couldn’t see the use. Where was Goldilicious, and what was she planning?
As if in answer to this unvoiced question, Mouse pressed several buttons and flipped a few switches as she studied a small monitor by her paw. “She’s in the tunnel behind us,” he said.
Finally took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and said, “Goldilicious, she gave you life, as you said. So don’t throw it away.”
Goldilicious tossed her head and neighed. “Because she gave me my life, I would willingly give it back. Goodbye, Apsides. I’ll see you in hell.”
With that, Goldilicious disappeared, and the screen went dark.
Then the world came crashing down.
A Kaxon sounded, and lights in the ceiling flashed red. With a deep roar, the train car rocked. Food and dishes clattered to the floor, and the children, unable to keep their balance, soon followed. Nancy hit the carpet and soon had egg and bacon grease all over her tutu.
“What’s happening?” shouted Judy.
“She blew the tunnel!” Mouse shouted back as she jiggled off her seat and hit the floor herself.
Finally yelped as another blast threw her into the control panel. Nonetheless, she kept her seat and pressed several buttons, bringing up a new display containing numbers Nancy couldn’t understand as well as a picture of a huge red blob pressing against the back of what looked like a high-speed bullet train.
“I’m locking down the blast doors!” Finally shouted. Everyone to the forward car! That might buy us enough time—”
“It’s no use!” Mouse shouted back. “This train wasn’t designed for that kind of pressure!”
A deep rumble shook Nancy’s bones, and the Klaxon grew higher in pitch.
“We just lost the back car,” Finally said, “but the door is holding … no, the door just went—”
“We’re dead!” Mouse yelled.
“I’m locking down now!” Finally slapped a large red button. “Everyone on your feet, and head that way! If you don’t get through, you don’t survive!”
With that, she leapt from her chair and bounded through a narrow doorway over which a thick, heavy slab of gray metal was slowly sliding down.
“Grab the Emeraldlicious!” Mouse shouted, and Nancy snatched the seed from the middle of the table.
The kids scrambled to their feet and ran. They stumbled over one another as they clambered through the closing door. Nancy, always cursed with slow legs, was the last, and the huge slab of metal was a mere three feet from the ground when she reached it.
She dropped to her stomach and tried to squirm through—and got stuck.
“Oh no!” Judy shouted. “It’s your big butt!”
She grabbed Nancy’s arms and pulled.
“My butt’s not that—ack!”
Nancy could feel the huge slab pressing into her lower back. In a moment, it would break her spine, smash her guts, and then split her in half. She had only a moment to realize that this was going to be really painful—and really gross.
Junie B. shoved Judy aside, seized Nancy’s wrists in an iron grip, and yanked.
Nancy was afraid she’d take her arms right out of their sockets. She didn’t, not quite, but she did pull Nancy through the door with a loud pop. Groaning, Nancy tumbled into the room, losing only the rubber tip of one sneaker under the huge metal wall.
On the far end of the room, another metal slab rumbled as its descent began, and the kids scrambled for it again. Then, in the next car, they did it again. And again. Each time, Nancy was the slowest, so Cam, the fastest, grabbed her by one arm and dragged her.
At last, they made it into a small room with white walls. Lining the walls were padded seats with hinged bars to drop over them, like in a rollercoaster.
“Pile in!” Mouse shouted. He and Finally took tiny seats of their own and brought their bars down with a click. The children jumped into larger chairs and did likewise. Behind them, another gray slab slid to the floor with a boom.
The room shook. Nancy bounced back and forth until her neck screamed in agony. She was afraid her teeth would rattle out of her head.
“Goldilicious shattered the tunnel,” Finally yelled over the roars and explosions. “There’s a plug of magma, under extremely high pressure, now pushing us along. The train’s not designed to take that kind of hit, but I’m hoping we’ll last long enough for the blast to throw us clear.”
“Clear of what?” Nancy yelled. She bounced back and forth in her seat, and gray spots swam at the edges of her vision.
The slab of metal bent inward with a loud shriek, making the kids jump, though it didn’t entirely give way. In its center, it began to glow a faint red, and Nancy felt sweat trickle from her scalp. She looked around. Everyone else was sweating, too. Cam tugged at her collar. Judy slumped. The air grew thick.
“It won’t matter if the car survives,” said Mouse, “if it gets too hot to breathe. Judy, you need to put up a shield!”
“What?” yelled Judy.
“Shield! A shield! You can do it if you get in the right mood! Yellow is your defensive color!”
Judy stared down at her ring. “It’s only yellow when I’m nervous—”
“You mean you’re not nervous now?”
“I’m not nervous, I’m terrified!”
“That’s fancy for scared,” Nancy mumbled in case anyone was listening. She could feel sweat pooling in her shoes, and she suddenly wished she’d put on fewer fancy clothes.
Teeth clenched, Judy raised her dark ring and pointed it at the glowing circle on the blast door.
“No!” shouted Mouse. “Not while it’s black! You’ll kill us all!”
“We can make it,” said Finally through clenched teeth. “This train is mostly nano-carbon. It can hold—”
“We’ve already lost most of it,” Mouse groaned. “Oh, I wish I could hide in the laundry basket!”
“Scaredy cat!” snarled Finally.
“What’s going to happen?” Nancy asked, panting.
Finally smiled weakly, and her tongue lolled out. “What happens when magma rises to the surface of the Earth, Nancy?”
Nancy thought back to what Mr. Dudery had taught his third-grade class about geology. “It … it becomes lava, right?”
Finally nodded. “That’s right. Magma is rushing through our tunnel at enormous speed, and we’re right in front of it.”
“You mean—?”
“Yes. Our Base Delta is about to turn into a volcano.”
Nancy’s heart pounded hard in her chest. The noise, the shaking, the heat, the raw fear all made her feel weak.
“Hey,” said Amelia as she wiped a stream of perspiration from her face, “I once baked a chocolate lava cake. So while the chocolate was still inside the cake, was it chocolate magma?”
No one answered her.
The gray spots grew larger in Nancy’s vision. As the heat pressed down on her like a weight, she tugged at her fuchsia tutu. Sweat coated her body, as if she’d been dipped in oil in preparation for frying.
She slumped. Her vision faded. The rattling grew worse, the roar louder. The glow in the center of the crumpling wall grew brighter.
Everything turned black. Realizing that she was losing consciousness, Nancy thought to herself that she was destined once again to wake up in a strange place.
But right before her thoughts faded, she realized she might not wake up at all.
