THE NOSE AND HIS PERFUME

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen: The Lab

When Bunny saw that Mr. Hartford still had J-F’s essence, she wondered how they could have been so stupid. If they didn’t return J-F’s essence to him soon, he would die. Bunny wondered what would happen if Mr. Hartford were to open the canister of essence, or smash it on the ground, as he was threatening to do.   

“Well? What are you waiting for? Let’s see this secret laboratory,” Mr. Hartford said.

“And J-F?” Mrs. V asked.

“You can have his essence back. I’m sure the Nose can save him, but first, he’s going to erase your memories. You were right, Salt—erasing their memories was a good idea,” Mr. Hartford said to the Nose.

The Nose said nothing in response. The Varshavskys relented. Mrs. V unlocked the big, iron gate and opened it for Mr. Hartford.

As they descended the cold staircase down to the abandoned subway station single file, Bunny, Beau, and Penny struggled to hold onto the extractor. The Nose awkwardly carried J-F’s lifeless body. The Varshavskys led the way down the platform to the mysterious metal door the children had been unable to open before. The Varshavskys stood in front of the door, looking up at it.  

“Is that a door? How does it open?” Beau asked them.

“There’s a password,” Mr. V replied, and then loudly and clearly said, “Beau, Bunny, Peter.”

The door rumbled and the sound of metal gears grinding against each other reverberated throughout the echoey station. The mysterious metal door screeched open with a clang. A light automatically came on, illuminating a corridor on the other side of the door, which was tiled in the same mosaics as the abandoned subway station. As they walked inside, the big, metal door clanged shut automatically behind them. After a short distance, the corridor ended in a wide, brass-railed ramp that sloped up.

At the top of the ramp, there was a round room as big as a stadium, with a high, domed ceiling. Considering it still contained ticket booths, Bunny was fairly sure that it had once been an entrance to the abandoned subway station, but it had since been converted into a secret, underground laboratory. The room was full of lab equipment, computers, and machines, most of which were covered in sheets to protect them from the blanket of dust that coated the disused laboratory. Rows of stainless steel worktables were littered with a tangle of wires and dead plants. Though the room was underground, its roof was glass. As Bunny looked up through the glass roof at the blue, sunny sky above, she thought for a moment that she was looking at the real sky, until she remembered that it was night. Someone had installed a fake sky in the roof in lieu of overhead lights, probably to make working underground more pleasant.

Mr. Hartford instructed the children to put the extractor down, and they laid it on a table, as he walked around the lab, curiously examining everything. He seemed to be keeping his distance from them, so no one would have the opportunity to wrest J-F’s essence from him.

“What is all this?” he asked of the various machines.

The Varshavskys didn’t answer.

“If we let you extract our memories, you’ll return J-F’s essence?” Mr. V said.

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he does,” the Nose said, gently laying J-F down on a table.

“You’re really going to extract our memories?” Bunny asked the Nose.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“That’s right. What are you waiting for? Extract their memories,” Mr. Hartford said.

Mrs. V nodded, and the Nose took his control out of his pocket. Bunny could tell that he didn’t want to do it, but he turned the extractor on anyway. She watched as the great ball of light ballooned out of the telescope-like body of the machine. The Nose motioned for the Varshavskys, children, and Carla to stand closer together; and they shuffled closer as though the Nose was about to take their picture. The swirling, coloured light of the extractor cast a strange glow over the lab, washing out everyone’s faces, making them appear eerily pale to Bunny, as if she was looking at them underwater. The Nose began to enter something into his control.