The Detachable Boy (11 page)

‘Are you okay?’

She struggled against her bonds. ‘Kind of stuck, but otherwise I’m fine. You?’

‘Same.’

‘What are they going to do to us?’

I swallowed. I remembered Wilkin’s forecast of a forcibly detached body and a scrambled brain and felt panic tugging at my joints. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, doing my best to sound cool, calm and connected. ‘Maybe ask us a few trivia questions or make us watch the news. I hope there’s no tickling. I can’t stand being tickled.’

A pasty-skinned man in a vinyl suit stepped into the light. ‘Shut up, you two, or I’ll have you gagged.’

Another guard called from the shadows. ‘Here he comes! The Head is coming, everybody, take your places.’

The guard in the light levelled a finger at Crystal and me. ‘Open your mouths again and I’ll nail them shut,’ he said, and disappeared into the gloom.

I was happy to oblige, or would have been if I could stop my teeth from chattering. Crystal whimpered quietly like a puppy.

A door creaked. Heavy footfalls echoed around the room and stopped just outside the range of the light.

‘So, these are the individuals from Pilberton two-three-oh-seven?’ a voice boomed. ‘The slippery ones who have been giving you so much trouble?’

A guard stepped under the light, clipboard in hand. ‘Ah, yes, Your Grace. There was a third individual and he’s . . .’

‘Nothing much of them, is there?’ the Head boomed.

‘Just children, really. And they had you running around the desert like a flock of SHEEP.’

‘There were a couple of events that complicated their . . .’

‘SILENCE! I need no excuses from you. I already know your incompetence has no bounds.’

With that, the Head stepped into the light.

Crystal and I sucked a tandem breath.

He was huge. Easily a foot taller than the tallest of the guards, he was broad-shouldered with muscles rippling over muscles. He wore a dark T-shirt, neatly ironed suit pants, polished black shoes and a scowl on his face that a silver-backed mountain gorilla would have been proud of. But the most striking thing about him was not his size or his dress sense, or his scowl.

The Head had four arms.

With his hands on his hips and more across his chest, he was the stuff of nightmares.

‘So, which of these two is the detachable one?’ he boomed.

‘Well, Your Grace, the intelligence from agents Fenshawe and Brown doesn’t really specify which . . .’

‘INTELLIGENCE? You need a BRAIN to deliver intelligence, Mr Stone, and Fenshawe and Brown don’t have a brain between them. No matter, we can soon find out.’

There was a bang and commotion in the darkness.

‘Sorry,’ someone called. Wheels rolled across the floor and another board was pushed under the lights.

‘Ravi?’ Crystal and I squeaked, in total disbelief.

‘My best buddies in the whole world! It is so good to see you again at last. For a while there I . . . holey moley, you’ve got four arms!’

‘Quiet!’ Mr Stone yelled.

The man in vinyl who’d delivered Ravi swallowed hard. ‘Sorry, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘This one has just arrived from Fenshawe and Brown. The third party in the Pilberton two-three-oh-seven case.’

He handed the paperwork to Mr Stone, who in turn handed it to the Head.

The Head glanced at the page. ‘Nice of you to join us, Master Carter. Better late than never.’

‘Thank you, big scary man with four arms,’ Ravi said. ‘I would have been here earlier but my flight out of Mascot was delayed. Apparently . . .’

‘
Shut up
!’ Mr Stone screamed.

‘Yes, of course,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ll be shutting up now.’

‘Shhh!’

‘Not another word,’ Ravi mumbled.

‘Hush!’

‘Oh, yes, silence is golden, as they say in the classics.’

‘ENOUGH!’ the Head boomed. ‘Start them up. Let’s see who screams and who doesn’t.’

Mr Stone pressed a button on a remote control. Small electric motors began to whine and I could feel the straps that held me in place getting tighter. Gaps opened in the board beneath me. I was being pulled apart.

Crystal was fighting against her bonds. ‘Stop! What are you doing?’

‘For the first time in my life, I hope I’m wrong,’ Ravi said. ‘I think it’s a modern version of that medieval torture they called the rack.’

‘Precisely, Master Carter,’ the Head purred. ‘In a few moments we will know which of you is detachable and which of you isn’t.’

‘And what difference will that make?’ Ravi groaned.

‘Well,’ the Head began. ‘If you come apart, we’ll use your pieces in our little enterprise. Your appendages will be sold to the highest bidder and shipped off to all corners of the world. And if you’re not . . . well, let’s just say that you’d be better off being detachable.’

The room echoed with a chorus of sinister laughter.

‘I’m rather fond of my appendages,’ Ravi said.

Wilkin had been right. I could feel my joints stretching, but I hung on. The thought of being sold off for spare parts when they realised I was the detachable one made me strong.

‘Arghhh,’ Crystal croaked. ‘It hurts, John!’

‘Best buddy,’ Ravi moaned, ‘if I survive this, do you think it will make me taller?’

I knew I had to let go. I had to be brave. I had to put an end to this torture and take my chances with the Head and the Hive before my friends were torn apart.

There was a ripping sound.

The motors in the racks stopped at the same time.

Ravi breathed a sigh of relief.

I realised the ripping sound wasn’t me. I was still intact.

‘Oh bother,’ Crystal cursed. ‘Bother bother bother and blast it.’

Crystal’s head had been torn from her shoulders.

Ravi gasped. I was too gobsmacked to speak.

‘Well, well, well,’ the Head said. ‘Take her down to Titania. Process the other two.’

Crystal was detachable.

CHAPTER
24

‘I
ACTUALLY DO
feel a bit taller,’ Ravi said, as our boards were wheeled down a long corridor.

I still hadn’t managed to speak. Crystal was detachable. All the years we’d known each other, she’d never let on. Now she was being taken to Titania and Ravi and I were about to be ‘processed’. Whatever that meant.

‘How?’ I finally asked.

‘How?’

‘How did you get here?’

‘Ha! You’ll be impressed, I know. I made a plaster cast of my own hand then pretended to lose it right in front of the black Saab that had run you down. Some big burly men in shiny black suits bundled me into the back of the car and here I am. Mother thinks I’m at camp. I have my passport, toothbrush, dental floss, mouthwash, and a small tube of toothpaste. All the essentials.’

We were wheeled into a room lit like a hospital operating theatre. There were computers, a sink and three chairs. We were greeted by a man with an enormous and hairless head. He was dressed in a green hospital gown and he welcomed us with a sinister smile. His teeth looked as though they’d been playing musical statues. The music had stopped and his teeth were frozen every which way.

‘My goodness, John,’ Ravi murmured. ‘That gentleman has a head like a watermelon. And his teeth! Arghhh. I can’t bear to look at them.’

Watermelon-head dismissed the guards.

‘Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit,’ he leered.

If I hadn’t been pinned to the board, I would have been a pile of quivering limbs on the floor. As it was, my tongue detached in my mouth.

The tongue that saved the day.

As Watermelon-head came closer and I opened my mouth to scream, my tongue popped out. It landed on the floor and Watermelon-head stood on it, slipped and came crashing into my board. Together, we skidded across the room and hit the wall with so much force that Watermelon-head lost his watermelon. It hit the floor with a dull thunk and rolled under a desk. My board toppled and crashed to the ground, freeing my right hand from its bondage.

My hand stretched and scrabbled to release the straps that had held me in place. By the time Watermelon-head’s body had righted itself, I was free.

‘Over here!’ the watermelon called. Watermelon-body felt the air in front of it and started to pace across the room.

I pushed a chair in its path and sent it sprawling across the floor. I undid Ravi’s bonds and together we collected the pieces of Watermelon-head and hung him in bags in the cupboard.

‘What are you doing?’ the head shouted. ‘You can’t do this to me!’

We had to lift together to get the head onto a chair.

‘You’ll never get away with this!’ it screamed.

I rinsed my tongue in the sink and reattached it. I patted the shiny noggin on the chair and smiled. ‘You’re probably right, but there’s no harm in trying.’

Ravi drew a chair to the computer desk. ‘Hmmm. What a lovely set-up you have here. Do you mind if I have a play?’

‘Yes! Keep your hands off my computer!’

‘Oh, it seems we’re already logged in. We don’t even need a password! Now, do we have any games installed?’

‘Not games, Ravi,’ I said. ‘We need a distraction. We need confusion. We need total mayhem while I find Crystal.’

Ravi was winking furiously with both eyes. ‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking of Age of Mythology, best buddy, I was thinking more like “Let’s push buttons until something really funny happens.”’

CHAPTER
25

I
RAN LOW
and hard along the corridor. I had to find Crystal. Had to find Titania before it was too late. It was somewhere near the bottom of the Hive. My mind raced as I tried to remember what Argus had told me about Titania. Both a place and a person. And a smell, a really bad smell. The rats knew about Titania but there were no rats to be seen. There were no cells here either, only doors with names on them, perhaps the living quarters of the men in vinyl. I slowed at each corner only long enough to check that the coast was clear. I ran until I found the transparent doors of a lift and pressed the button. I backed against the wall and prayed that the lift would arrive empty. It seemed to take forever but my prayers were eventually answered. I was on the fifty-third floor. I stabbed the button marked ‘100’ and the lift doors closed. As the lift descended into the bowels of the Hive, I detached my foot and joined my legs together – stilt style – so I could reach the manhole in the roof. The lid was unlocked – it must have been the same lift I’d travelled in earlier. I pushed through into the shaft and put myself back together again as the lift whistled down towards the hundredth floor. The air rushing past tugged at my hair. About twenty-five floors from the bottom of the shaft, the lift began to slow. It was stopping. Someone was about to get on and see me crouched on the roof.

My little foot had the right idea. It bailed out in a panic and flipped between the lift and the wall. It spun down through the gloom towards the concrete, twenty-five storeys below.

‘Not again!’ I cursed.

At least it was heading in the direction I was planning to go. I finally decided to join my little foot when I spotted shiny shoes and legs clad in black vinyl through the clear lift doors. I tucked into dive position and plunged through the space between the lift and the wall.

My body bounced and crumpled, sending limbs wheeling off in every direction. I rained down onto the rats’ nest at the base of the lift shaft.

The smell was worse than I remembered. The rottencabbage pong of a too-well-used public convenience. My head could taste it. My body came together at breakneck speed but when my head was home on top of my shoulders, I realised one of my hands was missing.

‘Righty?’ I called. ‘Where are you, Righty?’

A squealing sound was the only reply. I turned to see my hand galloping across the nest. It was riding on the back of a remarkably fat rat. The rat was bucking and twisting but Righty hung on like a miniature rodeo rider.

I pounced on my hand and lifted the squealing rat off the floor. I brought my hand to my head, as if the rat was some sort of telephone and I was about to make a call.

In a sense, I was.

‘Hello? Ratty?’ I thought.