“Yeah, we see that,” I said. “Can you get us out of the jump?”
“Everything is frozen,” she complained. “The grid is totally overloaded and I can’t take control.”
“So we are trapped in here?” Loor asked.
“I’ll alter the jump,” Zetlin offered. He lifted his arm to reveal his control bracelet and pressed the center button.
I winced. But nothing happened. Good news, bad news.
“We have no control,” Zetlin said softly. He then looked at Aja and said, “You must try to isolate the alpha grid. Perhaps you can fool the virus by creating a duplicate program.”
“Duplicate program?” I asked.
“Back up the alpha software,” Zetlin explained. “Then make that back-up the default. The virus may recognize it and attack both.”
“Divide and conquer,” I said.
“Exactly,” Zetlin added. “Can you do that?”
“I can try,” Aja said, and disappeared.
“And all we have to do is stay alive,” I added.
“I do not know how to fight this beast,” Loor said.
“I do,” I offered. “Quigs hate loud, piercing sounds. Their ears can’t take it. We gotta find something to make a sharp sound, like a whistle. If this thing is just like a quig, it’ll send it reeling.”
“I know something!” Zetlin announced, and continued running across the court.
We followed him through the next doorway into the odd basketball court with the four nets. Zetlin ran right for a metal equipment locker. “We use whistles for the games,” he announced.
I could have hugged the guy. We joined him at the locker and flipped it open. As he searched for the whistles, we heard the sound of the quig tearing through the doorway to get into the Skittles room.
“Not much time,” I cautioned.
Zetlin found two whistles that looked like kazoos. He gave me one.
“We’ll take turns,” I said. “I’ll blow until I run out of air, then you blow. The louder the better.” “What then?” Loor asked.
“We’ve got to get out of the Barbican,” I said. “We’ve got a better chance of hiding from this thing out in that city than in this building.”
We then heard a horrifying roar. All three of us looked to the doorway of the Skittles room to see…
The beast had grown. It was now way bigger than a normal quig. Its head was almost as wide as the doorway. I hoped these whistles would be loud enough to do a number on something that big.
“Please use the whistle,” Loor said calmly.
I took a deep breath and blew into the kazoo thing. The sound it made was awful and perfect. It was a totally annoying, loud shriek-exactly what quigs hate. The beast lifted its head and bellowed in agony over the monster. My mind raced ahead, already calculating how we would take turns blowing our whistles to keep the quig away from us long enough to escape. Our victory didn’t last long.
I had run out of breath and Zetlin was about to take over, when the quig stopped hollering. That’s because it was changing. Through the doorway we watched in horror as the quig’s head began to grow and squirm and change shape. The fur disappeared and it once again became the slick, black color it began with. Zetlin took a deep breath, but I put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s not a quig anymore.”
The shape of the head flattened out. The black, oily skin took on a new texture that looked like scales. The eyes changed from having the round pupils of a quig, to the vertical pupils of a snake. I hate snakes. Suddenly a pink tongue flicked into the room. It had to be three feet long.
The Reality Bug had changed itself into a snake, and snakes weren’t bothered by whistles.
“The elevator!” Loor exclaimed.
We all ran to the door that led to the blue elevator. Zetlin pulled, but it didn’t open. “It’s not here,” he announced with dread. “The players must have taken it.”
I glanced over my shoulder and immediately wished I hadn’t. What I saw made my stomach dance. The snake’s head was too wide to fit through the doorway, but that didn’t stop it. It simply turned sideways and slipped through. I stared in awe as this giant black snake slithered onto the court. Its eyes were focused on us as the rest of its long body slid in.
“Can we get the elevator here? Like soon?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was about to panic, which I was.
“It’s coming,” Zetlin answered.
“So is the snake,” Loor said.
The mutant snake slid to the center of the court and stopped. At least its head stopped. The rest of its snaky body kept coming.
“It is coiling,” Loor announced.
As the long body slid through the door, its head rose as it formed a coil. That was bad. When snakes coil, they strike. “How much longer?” I asked. “Almost here,” Zetlin answered. “Almost might be too late.”
The snake must have been twenty feet long, the body four feet thick. It was now in a perfect coil. Perfect for striking. It dropped its jaw and hissed, revealing a couple of nasty-looking fangs that had to be a foot long.
“Dr. Zetlin?” I urged.
“It’s here!” he exclaimed, and pulled the door open. That’s when the snake pulled its head back, opened its jaws, and struck.
(CONTINUED)
VEELOX
We dove into the small, blue elevator and I quickly pulled the door behind us. At that exact instant the snake hit with such a force that it slammed the door shut the rest of the way, knocking me into Loor and Zetlin. “Look!” Zetlin shouted.
Imbedded in the door, having cut clean through, were two snake fangs. A second later a stream of liquid shot from each of the huge teeth.
Venom.
We all scrambled to the side of the elevator to get out of the way. Zetlin’s hand was splashed with the poison and he screamed in pain.
“Get us out of here!” I shouted at Loor.
She reached for the control buttons. I don’t think she knew which was the right one, but it didn’t matter so long as we got moving. The elevator lurched and we were on our way. The fangs didn’t move, though. The snake was hitching a ride. Luckily the flow of venom had stopped. It must have shot out all that it had.
“We’re moving sideways,” I announced. “Why aren’t we going down?”
“Because the Barbican is horizontal,” Zetlin winced through his pain. “All the floors are on the same level.” Oh, right. I’d forgotten.
Loor took Zetlin’s hand and wiped away the venom with her sleeve. I saw that the poison had left a nasty-looking red slash on the back of his hand.
“I’m fine,” Zetlin said.
“How do we get out of here?” I asked, deciding to save my sympathy until after we were safe.
“We’ll take the elevator across to the jungle where you first entered,” Zetlin answered. “I can right the Barbican into a vertical position from there, and we can walk out the door.”
“That’s fine,” I said, then pointed to the fangs that were still imbedded in the door. “But as long as that thing’s got its jaws in us, we won’t even get out of the elevator.”
Suddenly, the car shuddered and stopped.
“Is that normal?” I asked.
“No,” answered Zetlin. “It must be-Before he could finish, the elevator began to shake. I looked at the fangs of our hitchhiker and saw them moving. The snake had decided to take control. A second later the fangs pulled out, leaving two holes in the door.
“Now what?” I asked.
The elevator began to rock. It felt like we were inside a small ship in rough seas. Zetlin looked at the control panel and announced, “We’re in the weight room.”
Weight room? Did Zetlin have a personal gym? He threw open a panel below the elevator controls to reveal a compartment with a series of odd-looking devices like the slippery skate pads we used to race across the ice. They had the same kind of wire frames that fit over shoes, but there was only one pad on the heel. It was a thicker pad, with a hole in the center.