Monster Factory

Chapter 6

The dean pushed through the frosted double doors and found the lead scientist, Edgar Bodkin standing behind a butcher's block table. He was short with dark hair, darker eyes and grin that always looked like he knew something no one else did. He stood completely still with his hands clasped behind his back. In the near distance machine gun fire echoed, and someone screamed, but the expression on Bodkin's face never changed. A thunderous lion's roar exploded from somewhere to my right, and I jumped in spite of myself. Bodkin and the dean glanced at me as though I was a psycho.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Just a project I'm working on." Bodkin replied matter of factly, "It's not quite ready yet."

"Edgar," the dean said, "I trust everything is in order."

Edgar nodded and gestured to the table of implements. Arranged on the table were a watch, a cell phone, a black hooded sweatshirt and three silver marbles.

"We don't know what you'll be up against, but based on Darius' past terror attacks, we've equipped you with the latest in counter measures.

I stepped to the table and reached for the cell phone.

"Is this the latest mod—"

Edgar slapped my hand before my fingers got near the shiny new phone, and said, "Take off your sweater. Put this one on."

I did as ordered and stood there in the new hoodie. He reached under the table and brought out a spray bottle filled with a purple fluid.

"Recently, Radish has employed chemical warfare ..." Dr. Bodkin said.

"Like at the east Germany Expo," Ruby said.

"Very good, Ruby," Edgar said. " Radish is big fan of poison gas so if you do encounter such a threat—" And he sprayed me with a mist of the purple fluid. It stank of rotting flowers, and suddenly my legs felt like pieces of overcooked spaghetti. The room grew dark, and my vision curled in at the edges. My head spun, but the hood of the sweater extended and slipped over my face, plastering itself to my skin. It joined up with the rest of the sweater to form an airtight seal. Immediately, I tasted a rush of oxygen as the hood converted into a gas mask, flushing out the poison and supplying me with clean, fresh oxygen. My vision came back, and I let go of the counter, able to stand on my feet again. Cameras built into the hood of the sweater allowed me to see and hear everything around me.

So cool!

"You have a limited air supply," Dr. Bodkin said. "Five minutes tops. The hood will activate automatically if it detects gas, but remember the limited air supply. There's a small button on the cuff of the right sleeve; if you push that, you get night vision. But don't push it now."

I pushed it, and everything became so bright I nearly burned my eyeballs out of their sockets. Using night vision goggles in a brightly lit room made it seem like I was staring into the sun.

Dr. Bodkin slipped around the table and double-tapped the button on the cuff, and the hood retracted to become just a simple hood again.

I rubbed my eyes.

"What's with the marbles?" I asked.

"Do you not read any of the gadget memos? Ruby asked.

"These," she said, pointing to the small silver balls, "are Taser balls. You press opposite sides at once to activate them and, when they contact skin, they send 50,000 volts through that unlucky person."

"Excellent, Ruby," Dr. Bodkin said.

"Teacher's pet," I whispered.

"Just remember not to touch them once they have been activated and, to answer your question, Milo, the phone is, indeed, the latest model with MOM encryption. As is this watch."

Dr. Bodkin flipped open the face of the watch and showed me two small drops of clear gel. "Inside are two tracking gels, they activate on contact and send their locations back to the watch and the phone."

Dr. Bodkin removed the stylus from the phone and, with slight pressure on the end, the writing tip expanded and bristled with keys of all shapes and sizes.

"With new smart gel technology, the stylus is able to pick any known lock."

"Cool."

I slipped the watch over my wrist, and stashed the phone and the magic marbles in my pocket.

"Do try and bring these items back."

"Always," I said.

"In working order," he added.

"No promises, Doc," I told him. "The field can be a dangerous place."

Bodkin fixed me with his dark-eyed shark stare. He was not impressed, and I had no idea what I was running into.