Floors #2: 3 Below (17 page)

“Ready?” Leo asked.

“Not really.”

Leo held the edge of the box, slowly turning the lid. Light burst forth, filling the space between where they stood and the faraway bulb. The Wyro began to shake and the iron box started getting heavier.

“It’s clear, just a path!” Remi said, but Leo wasn’t listening. The iron box had suddenly gotten so heavy, he couldn’t hold it up any longer. He fell to the ground, the iron box pinning his hand to the dirt.

“Leo!” Remi yelled. “Close it!”

“I’m trying! It wants to come out!”

Leo was pushing down on the lid, which was also pushing down on his pinned hand, but the lid wasn’t budging. There was still a crack where brilliant light burst out.

“I got this!” Remi screamed, putting his foot on the lid. His foot was also on Leo’s hand. Between Remi’s full weight and the weight of the iron box, Leo’s pinned fingers were screaming with pain. It felt a lot like the time he’d gotten his fingers closed in a car door, but he didn’t cry out. He kept his cool as the iron box closed shut and the light vanished.

“Okay, don’t get off yet,” Leo said through clinched teeth. “Let me slide my hand out from under your foot.”

Remi was balancing with one hand against the wall. His other hand was busy putting the four Floogers back in his red jacket pocket. Leo slowly worked his fingers out from between Remi’s doorman shoe and the iron box, then held the loose duct tape at the ready. Remi spun in a circle like a ballerina as he stood on the iron box, screwing it into place.

Leo’s other hand was still pinned between the iron box and the ground, and Remi was still standing on the iron box.

“On the count of three, jump, then land again,” Leo instructed. “Can you do that?”

“I can do it, but it’s going to hurt.”

Leo just shook his head. It was the only way. The Wyro was capable of unscrewing the lid if they didn’t secure it with tape.

“One, two, three!”

Remi jumped, Leo wrapped one strip of silver duct tape over the lid, and Remi landed back on the iron box.

“Okay, that hurt a little bit,” Leo said. “One more time and we should have it secured for sure.”

“Are you sure you can do this?” Remi asked. He felt awful having to jump up and down on Leo’s hand.

“One, two, three!” Leo said without answering, and Remi jumped. Leo wrapped another thick strip of duct tape over the iron box, then told Remi to get off his hand.

The box was weightless once more, but Leo didn’t move his injured hand until he and Remi had completely wrapped the box up again.

“You okay?” Remi asked, holding the featherlight box as Leo squeezed his fingers in and out of a fist.

“Nothing’s broken, but wow, that hurt. I think I’m going to have some bruises.”

“Better put this away,” Remi said. “That Wyro is serious business.”

“Thank goodness for duct tape.”

Both boys looked out in the direction of the soft yellow light and started walking. It was a long way, farther than it had looked, and at the end, under the bulb, there was a door with a message stenciled in black paint:

W
HIPPET
P
ROPERTY
.

D
O
N
OT
E
NTER
.

D
ANGER
.

T
URN
A
ROUND
.

G
O
A
WAY
.

D
ON’T
C
OME
B
ACK
.

B
OO
!

W
HY
A
RE
Y
OU
S
TILL
S
TANDING
T
HERE
?

“He’s a funny guy, Merganzer,” Remi said.

“Mr. Carp has to be down here,” Leo said, touching the doorknob, which matched the ones in the hotel upstairs. “Where else could he be?”

“It’s kind of a lot of warnings, though, right? Is that normal for Mr. Whippet?”

Leo wasn’t sure. It
was
a lot of warnings, but it was now or never.

Leo turned the handle and pushed the door open. He stepped through with Remi close behind.

What lay behind the door of warnings took Leo’s breath away.

W
hose cat is this?” asked Mr. Phipps. He was holding Claudius at arm’s length, plugging his nose. “It’s stinking up the basement.”

He’d been trying to find Leo and Remi for over an hour with no luck. Checking the basement, he’d found Claudius sleeping on Leo’s bed.

“Keep that thing away from me,” said Ms. Sparks. “It belongs to Mr. Carp, and he’s obviously done a poor job taking care of it.”

“Well, then, where is this Mr. Carp? Did you bring him here?” asked Mr. Phipps. He was rather proud of himself for standing up to Ms. Sparks so forcefully.

Ms. Sparks hadn’t seen Mr. Carp for hours, and it
was unnerving her as well. The little doofus only had one task — keep an eye on those kids! And this, suddenly, bothered her, too. She looked outside through the main doors of the lobby, where night had settled in, and wondered,
Where are Leo and Remi? What are they up to?
She’d been so focused on the clock — only two more hours to go! — she’d forgotten all about them.

“Where are those boys, Mr. Phipps?”

“You’re not really helping about the cat,” Mr. Phipps replied. “So I’ll assume you want me to put it outside.”

He dropped Claudius, and the cat turned on Mr. Phipps, hissing at his leg. It walked, very slowly, toward Ms. Sparks. Ms. Sparks stood stock-still, staring down at the smelly cat, until it purred against her leg, leaving a trail of cat hair on her polyester slacks.

“Claudius,” Ms. Sparks said, for she had liked the way the cat had hissed at Mr. Phipps. “Go outside and kill mice. Make yourself useful.”

The cat couldn’t have understood, but he had been interested in the garden and the pond ever since setting eyes on it. He was all too happy to be shooed out the door.

Ms. Sparks looked at her watch, then glared at Mr. Phipps.

“I demand that you keep this lobby clear of anyone but Mr. Yancey. I will not stand for that lunatic
Rickenbacker or pompous Mr. Bump! Keep them away from me, understood?”

Mr. Phipps didn’t understand why the guests of the hotel couldn’t move about the hotel they were paying to stay in, but he nodded just the same.

Something was up; he only wished he knew what it was.

When the lobby was clear, Ms. Sparks took out the special papers she’d been given the authority to fill out. She’d already carefully filled in every piece of information. By law, people had been invited to the auction. She’d sent out all the invitations to every known developer worth their salt in the entire state. Too bad for them those letters had all been accidentally mailed to a PO box owned by Ms. Sparks.

In one hour and fifty-seven minutes, the auction would take place on the steps of the Whippet Hotel. Only one bidder would arrive with his sealed offer, just enough to cover the taxes and a promise to make the property produce much more tax revenue in the future. Exactly what the governor wanted. Even Merganzer D. Whippet, with his vast resources, couldn’t offer the great state of New York a skyscraper producing tens of millions in income for the city. Ms. Sparks knew what would make officials happy, and she could deliver it:

A clean transfer of title.

A moneymaking high-rise monstrosity on the property.

Tax revenue to die for.

Ms. Sparks could hardly contain her excitement.

But where were those boys? And Mr. Carp. Where was he?

The ceiling was high, covered with fluorescent tubes of light hanging from long chains. The room itself was vast, as wide as a football field and just as long.

“I can see the reason for the warnings on the door,” Remi said, stumbling a few feet forward as he gazed into the open room.

It was cold like frozen metal, and both boys could see their own breath. Giant circular gears as tall as a house were intricately pieced together like the inside of a gigantic watch. Steel beams ran all through the room, connecting gear to gear to gear. This thing was a monster, a colossus.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Leo said. “This time, Merganzer has completely outdone himself. What on earth could this be for? And how could he have built it?”

Nothing moved, which made the Realm of Gears a scary place. There was something about the stillness of
such huge, dangerous objects connected to one another that left a ghostly dread in the air.

“It hasn’t been turned on in a while,” Remi said. “At least it doesn’t seem like it.”

“My hunch is you’re right, but what’s that noise?” Leo was listening intently, trying to get a better feel for a sound from far away. “It’s coming from over there. Come on.”

Leo moved cautiously in the direction of the sound, carefully stepping around and under the gears. It was like walking through the inside of a great grandfather clock that had stopped ticking. Everything was hard-edged, cold, mechanical.

“Should I wake Blop up?” Remi asked. “He might know about this place.”

“I don’t think we should. Let’s just see what the sound is. We’re almost there.”

They passed between three gears that were so close together, there was only room for them to slide through sideways.

“I feel like it’s alive,” Remi said, watching his cold breath as his breathing became choppy and afraid. “Like it’s going to wake up and tear us apart.”

Leo didn’t answer right away. He felt the same way, but he knew it wouldn’t help the situation if Remi knew they were both terrified. Leo was also afraid for a
different reason. He’d never been this far underground, and it felt desolate in a way he’d never felt before.

He tried to put on a brave face. “It’s going to be fine. Just keep moving, and don’t think too much.”

The sound was getting much louder, and both boys thought they knew what it was as they came to the opening of a tunnel leading down farther still.

“It’s gears, don’t you think?” Remi asked.

Leo nodded, and as they crept slowly into the tunnel, they saw that it was true. There were smaller gears, the size of a tractor tire, spinning inside. Half of each gear was underground where they couldn’t see, but they were definitely spinning.

“Why are these gears moving?” Leo asked out loud, though he was really asking himself.

Curiosity got the better of them and they crept farther inside, each of them standing on the opposite side of the gears, which ran down the middle of the tunnel.

“They’re getting smaller,” Leo said. “That’s weird, right?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Remi said. “And the ceiling is getting lower.
Everything
is getting smaller.”

Twenty feet later, they were both crouched down low, the gears the size of dinner plates grinding against one another. Up ahead, the tunnel curved to the right, to places they couldn’t see.

“Um, Leo?” Remi said.

“Yeah?”

“These aren’t gears.”

“What do you mean they’re not gears? Of course they are.”

Leo’s eyes had been adjusting to the light, and he hadn’t been watching as closely as Remi had. When he took a closer look, he saw that Remi was right. The spinning had slowed, and the teeth of the gears were sharp.

“They’re saw blades, not gears,” Remi said. “That can’t be good, right?”

Leo was starting to feel afraid. “Let’s just get to the curve and see what’s on the other side. That’s as far as we’ll go.”

Remi moved ahead, crawling as he went, sensing a sparkling sort of light around the corner. The gears were as sharp as dragons’ teeth, but at least they had gotten even smaller, like dozens of spinning saucers.