Cryptic Infiltration
Chapter Three – Blind Exploration
Bright sunlight streamed down over the group as they sped across the flat desert landscape beneath a cloudless sky, in the new vehicle Rudy had drawn. Franky the squirrel sat in the front beside Rudy, occasionally offering directions, but for the greater part of the journey, his input wasn't necessary. The desert was so bare and flat here that the red-furred Zoner knew the kids would have no problem finding the place he had in mind once they got close enough to it. They could already make out the mountains in the distance.
He was glad that the three had wanted to find something that he could easily make up a story and a location for. He had happened to know of the perfect place to take on the role of the lair of the 'beast' that the trio was apparently searching for. It was an old industrial building lying on the outskirts of the desert that had long since fallen into disuse; he and some of Serilda's other workers had taken everything useful they had found in it quite some time ago. It now lay abandoned and useless, but it served Franky's new purpose well. The place was huge, and he was sure it would occupy the children for quite some time. And, being in the desert, it was close enough that it would seem probable to the three that the creature they were searching for had made its lair there, and, as Rudy had explained, attacked someone in the park. He had also insisted that Rudy draw them a car for the journey rather than use the plane the boy had drawn earlier. He claimed he was terrified of planes, knowing the trio would be more likely to give up altogether when they inevitably found nothing in the building if the journey there had been longer and more tiring.
The squirrel leaned back in his seat, enjoying the feeling of the wind in his face as he turned from the window and glanced toward his temporary companions. Just based on what little he had seen of them, Franky could understand his boss's annoyance with the three. They seemed to be constantly messing in things that didn't concern them, and he chuckled lightly to himself as he pondered the irony of them possibly finding an actual beast that had taken up residence, for whatever reason, in the abandoned building. He thought that the group of friends seemed trusting enough, or least Rudy did. Of his friends, Penny seemed more worried about the possible dangers of the building and the creature they now believed lived there, and Snap still seemed suspicious of the whole thing. As he thought this, Franky caught Snap giving him a distrustful look, and he smiled, resisting the urge to laugh at the fact that Snap was still going along with all this despite his suspicions. 'Just going along with what Rudy wants to do, huh?' he thought to himself, finding it just as pathetic as Rudy's own trust in him. He gave the blue Zoner another cheery smile, as if he hadn't noticed anything amiss.
"Rudy, are you sure this is a good idea?" Snap muttered as he turned away from Franky's gaze. "I mean, ya did make the park more secure while we was there, didn't you?"
"Yeah, I did," Rudy called back from the front seat, "but we aren't sure exactly what this thing is capable of if it can sneak into that cave so easily. I just want to make sure no one else gets hurt."
"What are you so worried about?" Franky began, turning to Snap with another cheerful look, his voice sounding upbeat and friendly. "You won't be going in the building. You'd probably just hurt your other leg." Before the blue and white Zoner could reply, the red squirrel turned to Rudy. "Now, you're probably going to have to go pretty far into this building, but I promise you, the creature sleeps during the daytime, so you'll have no problem-"
"The attack happened during the day," Snap muttered in an irritated tone. "Seems your information ain't quite so accurate."
"Well, obviously it had a very specific reason for this attack," Franky continued, quickly thinking of a believable explanation. "It obviously targeted this Zoner at a time no one would think to expect it."
"I thought this was the first time this happened," Snap stated.
"Well…maybe at the park," Franky continued, thinking fast, "but I've heard the people at the factories have been terrorized by this creature before."
"Wait, what?" Penny cried, obviously startled, as she turned to him.
"Y-yes!" he continued enthusiastically, making sure he appeared visibly distraught. "Many of them have been attacked by this…this beast, and recently too…and it usually attacks at night or during evening. Very unusual for it to attack during the daytime." He shook his head in mock confusion. "Very unusual…"
"Uh, Franky?" Rudy began, keeping his eyes on the way ahead as he addressed the squirrel. "Do you happen to know what this creature looks like?"
"I dunno, I've never seen it," he replied. "Well, caught glimpses of it when I went exploring around this area, but it was always in the shadows, around that big building. Had to be the same one…" He was glad when the trio didn't question him as to how the monster was commonly described.
The group didn't speak much as they continued to travel across the flat desert, soon coming closer to the small mountains where Franky knew was the location of building he had been leading them towards. "Right! There it is!" he cried, sitting upright and pointing a paw toward the mountains. Now that they were closer, they could each make out, in spite of the shadow cast over the rocks, the ancient gray husk of an enormous, long abandoned building at the base of the mountains.
"So…you're pretty sure this creature will be asleep?" Rudy asked as he peered at the structure they were rapidly approaching.
"Positive," Franky assured him. "After all, it traveled all the way to the park and back yesterday…it's got to be tired."
"And if it wakes up?" Snap asked worriedly.
"Rudy's got the magic chalk, right?" the squirrel replied calmly. "Not much that could go wrong, is there?" He noticed Penny frown at him, but she said nothing, fixing her gaze on the building as well.
It did not take long for them to arrive at the base of the mountain. Rudy parked the car in front of the building. Its solid gray walls stretched many stories high, and the structure was wide enough to accommodate a vast amount of rooms. Several of its windows were broken, many of them having been reduced to gaping holes lined with shards of glass, and there were no longer any front doors, simply a wide, rectangular black opening looming in front of them and positioned where a once grand entrance would have been. Suddenly worried, Rudy looked at the others after they'd all stepped out of the car. "We'd better block all the exits," he stated. "In case that monster tries to come out while we're in there."
"We might not have to go in at all," Penny began, her gaze scanning the building's vast form. "We could just leave one entrance open and set the trap there."
"Oh, I'm not sure…" Franky began, suddenly seeming a bit worried as the others looked to him. "The creature's skilled at sneaking in and out of places…you might have no choice but to go in." He paused before giving them a sympathetic glance.
"That's true," Rudy sighed. "After all, it did get into the dinosaur cave in the park, and Alyssa said that was hard to get into, but…we should still block the entrances, at least to delay it if it tries to get out while we're looking for it."
"Yes, yes, that's a great idea!" Franky complimented. "However, before you do that, I would much appreciate it if you drew me some transportation so I could get back to the park. It's busy at this time of day, and I'm sure I'll be needed."
"What? You're just gonna take off right now?" Snap cried.
"I…didn't know you worked for the park," Penny stated, a bit surprised, before the squirrel could reply to Snap.
"I do," he replied. "I wasn't supposed to work today, but…" He trailed off for a moment before continuing. "One of my coworkers needed my help, and I agreed to come in, but then I met you of course."
"He must mean Alyssa," Penny stated to Snap, whose suspicion vanished for a moment before he sighed and nodded.
Franky gave them a pleased grin. "Oh…oh, yes! Exactly! I'm glad you understand."
Rudy told Franky he'd draw him a car after he blocked the exits to the building, and they watched as he used the rockets on his shoes to lift off toward the building's upper windows, examining them carefully before drawing bars across the first one, making sure to draw them thick and sturdy.
"Hope you guys don't end up trapped in there yourselves," Franky began in a joking manner as Rudy began to repeat the same thing with the other windows. "That would be a bit of a problem."
"Rudy could just draw a hole in the bars," Snap replied with a shrug, a little annoyed with how casual the Zoner had sounded. "We're not gonna get trapped."
"Snap," Penny interrupted, glancing away from the building, "I…think you're going to have to stay behind." She glanced toward his leg and he frowned.
"Yeah, but…maybe I can…"
"Penny's right," Rudy said regretfully as he landed beside them, having already finished blocking the windows and the other doorways, as there hadn't been as many as he'd first thought, despite the size of the building. "It might be dangerous, and we'd have to search a large area."
Snap sighed. "I guess you're right, Bucko," he muttered reluctantly. After walking around so much that day, his injured leg was starting to hurt much worse than it usually did.
Rudy turned back to the building. "Okay, well that takes care of all the other exits," he stated with a hint of nervousness, looking up at the building before drawing a smaller vehicle for Franky, who nodded in appreciation as it was completed.
"That's very nice! Thank you, Rudy," he said pleasantly.
"You're welcome," the boy replied with a smile. "And thank you for helping us find this place."
"My pleasure," the red-furred squirrel replied, getting into the car and waving to the trio as he cried, "Well, I definitely need to be getting back, and you need to find that creature!" He smiled and added a quick good bye before starting the vehicle. He barely waited for their replies before he sped off into the desert. Rudy was momentarily confused before he remembered that Franky had said he was needed back at the park, and didn't think much of his hasty departure.
"Snap, in case anything bad happens while we're in there, you should stay in the car, and drive to safety if anything happens," Rudy told his friend, who looked less than pleased with the idea.
"All right…" Snap sighed, seeming a bit worried about the prospect of leaving Rudy and Penny behind.
"Don't worry about us," Rudy reassured him. "We'll be fine." Knowing the building was likely to be dark, he drew both himself and Penny a helmet with a light attached, much like the ones they had used while exploring the gigantic crystal cave they had discovered a month ago. As an extra precaution, he drew a small device designed to launch a pod that would release a sort of sleeping gas.
"Good thinking, Rudy," Penny complimented as he explained to her how it worked.
"We can stop the monster with this when we find it," he told Snap, who just nodded, looking less worried after Rudy's reassurance, but more irritated that he would not be able to help.
Rudy and Penny faced the open doorway, which was quite large compared to the rest of the doors they had seen in other parts of the structure, and Rudy began drawing the trap. Moving the chalk along the ground, he traced a large, rectangular pit, pausing once it was completed to make sure it stretched as long as the door opening and the small steps leading up to it. He then used his rocket shoes to draw a trapdoor over it. Afterward, Penny suggested that he add a mechanism that would cause bars to lock into place once the creature was trapped, and Rudy nodded, drawing a row of bars on each side of the trap designed to spring into place after a Zoner had triggered the trap. He then covered the whole thing with a thick rug made to look like the desert dust. Penny and Snap were impressed at how well it blended in with the surrounding ground.
"Obviously, we'll have to remove this when we're gone," Penny said as she walked up to where she knew the trap's edge was. "We don't want any innocent Zoners getting trapped in there."
"Yeah, you're right," Rudy replied. He only hoped that the beast would be inclined to flee, like it had in the park, and would run into the trap. It was the least hazardous way of removing the danger. "We'll be back soon!" he called to Snap as he walked along the edge of the trap toward the building's entrance.
The trap area was the same length as the doorway itself, so Rudy and Penny had to carefully step over the corner of it and onto the small set of steps leading up to the door to get inside. Once they walked through the opening, they waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust to the lower light level as they carefully scanned the room with their helmet lights.
It was fairly large, and had several doors leading to other areas, most of them torn down or hanging ajar at odd angles. There were only a few pieces of furniture, each of them broken beyond any sort of repair, but other than that, the room was completely empty.
"Rudy, look," Penny whispered, pointing down toward their feet. Rudy glanced down and for the first time noticed that there were footprints in the dust tracked in from the desert that scattered the floor all around them, and he tensed. "Wait a minute," Penny continued, "these weren't made by a four legged creature." She knelt down to inspect the prints, which had quite obviously been made by a being who walked on two legs. "Someone else was here."
"They might have been looking for the same thing we are," Rudy suggested, realizing that the footprints weren't very old, or the wind would have blown them away. Penny pointed out different sets of tracks that looked similar but headed out the door, and he wondered aloud if it had been a group of explorers.
"If it was, it looked like they left without difficulty," Penny replied. "The creature might not make its home inside the building at all…perhaps it instead lives around the mountains."
"Maybe," Rudy replied with a twinge of worry for Snap, "but we should…still make sure, shouldn't we?"
Penny nodded in reply and they carefully crept forward, peering into the doorways but noting that everything seemed as vacant and empty as the first room. "Rudy, I don't think it's in here," she said after they had wandered for several minutes and come to enter a large room with two sets of stairs, both in a bad state of ruin and decay. "We would have seen footprints of a four-legged creature at the entrance if it had been here recently. The windows were too high up for it to reach easily, and the front entrance is much more accessible than the other doorways. I suppose it could have come in another way, but it seems unlikely. It might not have been here for days." She began to feel uneasy about the thing, and couldn't shake the feeling they were looking in the wrong place.
"Maybe not," Rudy said after a moment, "but hopefully we'll find something here that'll help us learn about it, and stop it from hurting anyone else."
They looked warily around the room, still a bit unnerved at the thought of running into the creature in its own lair despite the fact that there was no sign of it. The place was massive, but so bare of anything that Rudy couldn't guess what it had originally been used for. The walls were all the same dull gray color, and seemed to be comprised of sheets of metal in this particular room. Many places of the wall were coated thickly in rust, dirt, or both, and as they craned their necks to look upward, they could spot several holes in the ceiling.
The amount of doors and hallways leading from the room unnerved Rudy, and he found himself attempting to watch them all at once, half expecting the creature to jump out at them at any moment. He reminded himself that, since Alyssa's injuries were fairly minor, they weren't likely dealing with anything incredibly dangerous, and forced himself to relax.
"Where do you think it would be hiding?" Rudy asked in a whisper, looking nervously at Penny.
"I'm not sure," she replied, kneeling down to inspect the floor. Rudy was confused as to what her intentions were before she replied, "I haven't seen any signs of tracked-in sand here. It's hard to tell if anything has been in here recently." She stood up and looked around, noting that most of the doorways were left ajar, if they still had doors at all. Some of them had faded 'caution' signs painted on them, but as she shone her light beyond the nearest of said doors, she could tell that, like the other rooms, they were empty. Only one of the doors remained closed, she noted as she looked around, and peered inside the room it led to along with the others. She saw that they all led to empty rooms or empty hallways, mentioning it to her friend.
"Maybe we should look up there," Rudy suggested, pointing toward the two staircases, each positioned at a somewhat strange angle and sloping steeply upward to the higher level of the room. They didn't have a very good view of the upper story, and Penny nodded in reply before telling Rudy to use his chalk to reinforce the stairs; they didn't look very stable at all.
After he had done so, they ascended quickly, feeling unnerved at the creaking that the stairs' gave, but they held firm, and Rudy realized that if the creature had used them, they had probably been more stable than they looked.
Once at the top of the stairs, they stood on a small strip of floor that was curved in a semi-circle, meeting a blank gray wall with several doors along it, positioned at regular intervals.
After scanning the multiple doors, the duo wandered through the room until Penny spotted a scattering of sand on the floor surrounding the middle door along the wall. She squinted, noting that the sand had been tracked in. "Look," she whispered, pointing down to the floor as she approached it. Her helmet light illuminated what had caught her attention. "Traces of sand from the desert. The creature must have carried it in…or at least someone did."
"So whatever it was went in here?" Rudy asked, turning his head upward and allowing light from his helmet to stream into the doorway.
"Looks that way," she replied with a curious frown.
They slowly crept inside, but saw only another empty room with a few doorways and a staircase. These doors were actually still intact, and when Rudy and Penny tried them, they were locked. Rudy suggested drawing an opening for them, but Penny reminded him that if they were locked, an animal on four legs wouldn't be able to get through them, so he discarded the idea, knowing their quarry wouldn't be there.
"Rudy…" Penny began with sudden nervousness, glancing to him, "what if the animal we're looking for belongs to someone? I know those footprints at the front of the building led outside, but we can't be sure when they were made…they could have walked around the place before leaving."
He gave a frown, trying to reassure them both. "I don't know," he replied with some measure of steadiness, "but I think if we were walking into a trap, we would have found it by now."
That did seem reasonable, and Penny realized that it was likely that the place was simply abandoned. Apart from sand that had clearly been walked in and other old footprints, there was no sign of anyone there, and it wasn't as if there was much of a place to hide in the rooms when they were so empty.
The staircase led to another locked door, and Rudy and Penny decided to backtrack, realizing they were getting nowhere trying to follow trails of sand that could be far older and useless than they realized. Instead, they decided to search each of the rooms with open doorways that could be easily accessed by the creature, and if they found nothing, they would venture into the locked rooms, just in case it had somehow managed to find a way past the doors.
Starting from the comparatively smaller top floor area, they looked through each room. Although they were empty and easy to search, the sheer number of hallways and turns meant that they had a lot of area to cover. Yet, each time they found nothing. After opening even the locked doors and finding rooms that were similarly empty, as well as inaccessible to anything that didn't have a key or a means to break down the door, they headed down to the lower floor, beginning to search the rooms and hallways there.
After a while, it became clear that keeping track of where they had and hadn't been was difficult. Even Penny was becoming a bit confused. Rudy quickly doodled a small can of spray paint, putting a red mark on the wall near each doorway they looked through.
As time went on, Rudy realized that he and Penny probably didn't have too much longer to look before they would have to get ready to return home. However, both were becoming increasingly convinced that there was no one in the building. Even shouting did not alert the attention of anyone or anything, and Penny again brought up the absence of animal footprints in the sand near the entrance as they rested in a bleak-looking but very large and spacious hallway.
"Well, I think that if this is the animal's home, it's not here now," Penny concluded thoughtfully. "Perhaps it entered the park in search of a new one." She paused and heaved a sigh. "I'm not sure, but it's either that or it hasn't arrived back yet, if this really is its home." She gave her head a little shake. There seemed to be a piece missing from the puzzle.
Rudy nodded, a little unsure himself if Franky had been telling the truth or if he was merely misinformed, or whether he was actually right about the building being the beasts lair and that, for some reason, had changed.
"I'm not sure there's anything else we can do," she mused. "You drew further protection for the park; I'm sure that will be enough." Seeing that he still looked worried and uneasy about the whole thing, she added, "If anything else happens there, we'll definitely look again…but right now we just don't have enough information." She shrugged, signaling obvious futility. "To keep searching seems a little pointless."
He kept his eyes on her and thought for a moment. He tried to devise a rebuttal, but he simply lacked an argument. "All right," he agreed reluctantly. "But we should leave the trap out, in case it comes back."
"I don't know, Rudy," Penny replied, her eyebrows shaping her worry. "Someone innocent could stumble into it, and we don't have time to check the trap frequently."
"Yeah…you're right," he admitted. He looked around the empty husk of the building's room. "Maybe we should check a few more of the locked doors first. We aren't sure this thing can't open locks."
"I guess so," Penny sighed. She was doubtful about the idea, considering the locks that she had examined on the doors looked complex and not easily opened, but she knew that in ChalkZone, it was possible the animal had some sort of ability that they weren't aware of. "But we'd better hurry; we don't have a large amount of time. And we still need to get back to the park to make sure they keep a look out for any more suspicious activity."
"Right," Rudy nodded firmly, walking up to a locked door the two had seen earlier and drawing a long rectangular opening in it with his magic chalk.
ooo
Snap had gained no sign of his friends for quite some time, and he was beginning to grow worried. He had no idea what was taking them so long, and he thought they should have found the creature by then. He could hear nothing from within the building from his position in the truck, and that, along with many other things about the situation, was beginning to unnerve him. "I hope they're okay…" he uttered to himself worriedly as he prepared to wait longer. He remembered Penny saying something about when they needed to be back, but he didn't have any way to check the time. He couldn't be sure, but it seemed like the amount of time they were allotted to stay in ChalkZone had past, and if that were true, it was a definite sign that something had gone wrong.
He wasn't sure what could have happened, but knew that it could have been anything from the beast attacking to his friends simply getting lost. Perhaps, he thought, there was something else in there, something more dangerous than this notorious beast, or some other sort of hidden danger. It was possible that they had simply lost track of time, but Snap was not inclined to dismiss potential danger. The trio had a habit of encountering danger no matter what adventure they embarked on, so the possibility for something bad was too high to ignore.
Snap began to think back to a previous adventure the three of them had undertaken, recalling the night they had all been trapped in a large, abandoned building that turned out to be constantly rearranging itself, shifting its interior around and getting them more and more lost. It had also turned out to be extremely dangerous, and in light of the unexpectedness that occurred in that situation, his worry for his two friends grew. He knew that, unlike the time in the building he had recalled, Rudy had his chalk this time, but he knew that that was not always guaranteed protection, especially if something took them by surprise.
He had no way of knowing if any such thing had happened from outside, where he was forced to wait for them. He only knew that, if there was a chance that Franky was wrong about the place, or if he had purposely lied, his friends could have walked into something more dangerous than they realized, and he wondered why it had taken him until they'd been gone for such a long time to consider that viewpoint.
He also realized that, if there was any sort of danger, he was likely the only Zoner around for miles, and though he wasn't sure if going into the building himself was a good idea, he couldn't think of anything else he could do. It had been too long for him to justify staying there and waiting any longer.
Opening the car door and lowering himself down, he peered ahead at the building. There was no sign of any movement from any of its many openings, which Rudy had blocked, but a reminder of the previous building they had traveled through made it clear that any danger might not be obvious.
He carefully approached the building, avoiding the trap he knew rested in the ground in front of the entrance and carefully stepping onto the small steps leading up to the building's main front doors. In spite of the worrisome situation, he couldn't help feeling aggravated that his leg couldn't heal faster.
The inside of the building was silent and eerie, and would have been completely dark were it not for the door opening and several broken windows many yards above Snap's head. Bright rays of desert sunlight filtered through the gloom, illuminating floating dust particles.
As Snap looked around warily, he could make out dozens of doors and several hallways branching off from the room he was standing in, and with a sense of dread, he realized he didn't have much of a chance of finding his friends anytime soon if they weren't able to hear his voice. Knowing he could be drawing attention to himself but proceeding anyway, he shouted his friends' names several times, but there was no response other than the faint echo of his own voice. Despite the fact that the room was bright enough to see, the hallways remained dark, and he had to feel along the walls until he entered an area that was better illuminated.
As Snap wandered through the building, he constantly contemplated calling his friends' names again, but feared that would attract the attention of less friendly ChalkZone dwellers, and instead focused on keeping alert and checking practically every doorway he encountered. Occasionally he would find a double set of fresh shoeprints and find himself relived that he was headed in the correct direction.
Aside from the infrequent lot of footprints, Snap traveled through the hallways without seeing any sign of his friends. One positive thing was that the floor was mostly smooth and fairly easy to walk on, although his leg was aching from repeated use. He had no idea where he was going or if Rudy and Penny had even come down this way; there was no sign of them. Eventually he passed two sets of stairs that were clearly in a bad state which he didn't want to risk climbing for fear that it might collapse, and because he was sure his leg would make it extremely difficult for him to climb, even with his crutch, and was giving him enough grief as it was. More footprints caught his eye which led down the hall and away from the stairs, so he followed them past many doors instead, making sure he briefly checked the rooms they led to.
Suddenly he reached a strange door that looked like it was normally locked, but it appeared to be broken, so he pushed it open. Although the room was fairly empty except a few pieces of large broken furniture, he had a feeling that his friends had been inside. The broken lock must have been them, he thought, as he could see that their shoes had left footprints in the dust. He approached the end of the room and grunted when he found what looked to be a hidden door behind one of the broken fragments of wood. Opening it curiously, he could see that it led down another hallway that was strangely narrow compared to the others, and didn't appear to have many doors. He saw a long door at the end and reassured himself that it was likely his friends had wanted to investigate the same strange difference this door seemed to have from the rest, as he definitely knew they entered the room, so he pressed on and up to the tall door.
He opened the door with minor difficulty to find a room unlike the previous ones he had encountered in the building. The room was not lit, but there was a small window on one wall through which a bit of light filtered, but the glass was so caked with dust that the light was barely illuminating. With this small amount of brightness, he could tell that several other portable light sources had been set up around the room, though at the moment, none were lit. Walking over to one, Snap squinted to make out the switch on its side in the gloom, and flipped it on.
To his surprise, the light flickered on brightly. He had expected it to be dim and flickering if it worked at all, but the light illuminated everything like it was brand new, and for the first time, Snap could get a good look at the room he was standing in.
It was a very strange room that seemed almost small because it was so cluttered. There were rows of tables, many of them looking quite battered, lined up from Snap's end of the room to the other, and each was covered with a variety of objects. As Snap moved closer, he realized that the objects were jars—dozens of them. He approached the nearest table and saw that a row of jars around the center each contained some kind of small insect. He was in awe as he realized that there were all kinds—ones like those typically found in the Real World as well as some not even he had seen in ChalkZone before. There were many of the same kind of insects in the one place and Snap was able to see that each was relatively distinguishable.
As he looked at each one with more focus, he could see that most of them were dead. He wondered if whoever had put them there had forgotten to come and feed them or something, or if they had simply died due to the wrong environment, when he noticed the labels on other jars, which, unlike the ones containing the bugs, weren't clear.
Some of them, however, had small logos or illustrations briefly detailing the contents of the jars, which he was able to easily identify. It came as a shock to him as he figured out that they contained poison. Some was in the form of powder and some liquid, and each spanned a limited range of colors. As he switched back to the insects, he noted that many seemed to be suffering the effects of some poisons or, as he thought they must be, pesticides.
"Well that's not somethin' you see every day," he muttered to himself in shock.
ooo
Rudy had peered through the opening he'd created in the thick metal door and had come across a small room completely devoid of anything save for one object. It was an odd sort of rounded machine, almost oval shaped, apart from the flat bottom that allowed it to rest easily on the floor. The machine looked somewhat old, and as Rudy came closer, he noticed a few broken or missing buttons on its control panel.
"Rudy, wait!" Penny warned with a gaze flicking between the contraption and her friend, coming to stand beside him. "We don't know what that thing is."
"Well, it looks like it's shut down," Rudy replied with a sturdy voice, clearly not worried about it starting up and doing something unexpected.
As they looked over the machine, it didn't appear to be anything harmful; in fact, it looked as if it had just been abandoned and left there for some reason the two of them couldn't guess.
"Maybe it's a remnant of the factory that was once inside this place," Penny muttered, having noted along the way that the building had seemed like it had once been a factory or something similar to one, but was now devoid of any machinery.
"It could be…" Rudy examined the buttons on the panel and out of curiosity, pressed a few, but the machine was unresponsive. When he tried again, this time jabbing the buttons in another order, it still made no sign of reacting. Rudy stepped back and glanced to Penny. "I have a feeling that this machine can tell us something about this place…"
Penny looked a little confused. "I don't think this machine has a programmed artificial intelligence interface… Or, at least, it doesn't appear to."
Rudy frowned until he realized what she was talking about. "No, I didn't mean it would actually speak. It just…seems like some sort of clue." After a few moments of pondering, he declared that he was going to fix it. Although Penny did not know if his idea was a good one or not, she pointed out to him that since it had a panel with buttons one was supposed to press, and therefore stand by the machine when it operated, it was likely not dangerous. The boy began to draw different things to try to figure out the machine's problem, but at first only ended with a number of failures.
The brief thought that it could have come from the Dome of the Future entered Rudy's mind, and he was somewhat nervous as he approached the control panel again. He wanted to redraw the buttons, but as he was about to do so, Penny's voice interrupted his concentration.
"Wait a minute, Rudy!" she cried, making him look to her in surprise, clearly not understanding why she suddenly looked worried. "I don't know if redrawing the buttons is a good idea. You don't know what they were originally meant to do. If you redrew them without knowing their function, something could go amiss."
Rudy paused for a second before sighing, "You're right." He pulled his arm away from the machine. He again visually assessed it, but apart from the buttons missing, some of the control panel and wires underneath had been torn at or severed, so he wasn't sure how to fix it or if he even could.
However, after a few more tries, Penny decided to help him try to find a solution. They soon drew the conclusion that there were parts which were missing from the contraption and therefore inhibited its ability to run, and simply had to redraw the missing parts and install them. The other thing he had to do was repair a wire, and took the chance of doodling more buttons in the missing ones' places.
Suddenly the machine whirred to life, and Rudy and Penny stepped back reflexively as a few lights on its dome-like structure lit up. Unsure what was about to happen, they waited in silence before a small compartment in the side of the machine, which had been so well concealed that they hadn't noticed it before, popped open, and a small object rolled out.
Rudy bent down to pick it up as the machine began to sputter as it seemed to fail to produce another one. Rudy pressed the same button as he had before and its production process ground to a halt, although the lights stayed on. Looking at the item in his hand, Rudy realized that it was nothing more than a glass jar. He handed it to Penny, who looked just as perplexed.
"That's odd…" she muttered. "I don't see what this has to do with the criminal we're after..." She thought for a moment, going over the situation in her head and making connections she had not considered before. "It might…it might have something to do with the factories or that "Ironveer," now that I think about it. He didn't want us leaving the park. They obviously wanted to stop Snap and I," she continued. "At the time I thought they were only preoccupied with the fence, but…what if this facility belonged to them too? Or used to?" She took another look at the machine while Rudy pressed the button and another jar came out. "I just really think there's something strange going on."
"I'll say," said Rudy. "It seems like someone was here recently…maybe whoever it was owns the creature and uses this place…" He could not help but give a small smile of excitement. "Wait until Snap hears about this!"
ooo
"…Wait till Rudy and Penny find out about this…" Snap said to himself as his gaze traveled around the room. It was obviously some sort of makeshift lab, and as he moved along the rows of tables, it seemed increasingly unprofessional. Many of the tables were filthy, coated in substances he couldn't identify and ensured to steer clear from, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the "experiments" that were being done. From what Snap had heard Penny saying about her science experiments, or what little he actually cared to remember, this was not how one was meant to go about them. It was disorganized and unclear, and there didn't seem to be a group of insects that didn't have anything done to them. He remembered Penny talking about how the "control group" was always necessary for comparison, but saw none amongst the benches. As far as he could tell, there were only a relative few of the tiny creatures still alive, though many had strange symptoms like extra legs, random discoloration or adjustment to pigmentation, or acted extremely uncharacteristically compared to the others. He couldn't help feeling sorry for them and was tempted to release them from their jars, but the fact that he didn't know if they were dangerous or whether their diseases – if that was what they had – were contagious made him realize that was a bad idea.
Limping away from the tables, he approached the far wall where there was a table that appeared to be used as a makeshift desk. A broken, beaten-looking chair, the only one in the room, was set up against it, and the desk itself was littered with papers and notebooks and several more of the jars with insects. Sitting down on the chair so he could use his good arm, he began to sort through the papers and see if he could find out what on earth that place was. He could tell it had been abandoned for at least a few days, from the thin layer of dust covering the papers, so he wasn't worried about anyone finding him there. The thought that the beast they were following could enter invaded his mind, however, and he was desperate to find his friends. He knew he once he left the "lab," he may not have been able to find his way back, so he had to figure out what was going on; if there was something sinister happening, which he strongly suspected there was, he knew Rudy and Penny would need to know.
Still worried that his friends might be in danger or trapped, Snap skimmed the papers as fast as he could, but most of it seemed to be scribbled nonsense. After about a minute, he was ready to give up and continue his frantic search when he noticed a notebook that seemed somewhat more organized. He flipped through its pages and saw a simple list of numbers, each with the words "perished" or "immune" by it. Sometimes a crude drawing of one of the insects rested beside the figures, followed by another number which he thought, after looking around at some of the other containers that were on the desk with the jars, might be what they were labeling each substance, whatever it was, that they were testing on the bugs.
Nervously he pushed his chair back away from the bottles. After skimming the page and quickly looking at a few more, he concluded that that was probably as much information as he was going to be able to get. He first wondered if the lab must be used to test poisons – maybe some sort of pesticides – on the insects, but the fact that so many had died and yet they were still testing put the theory under an unlikely light.
As he got up to leave, worried he had wasted too much time there, another theory suddenly popped into his head. Thinking back to the document he had read, he started to wonder if they were trying to make them immune to the poisons. He glanced back to the insects in some of the jars and noted that the many dead ones would have been clear failures, and it was possible that there had been a recent breakthrough at the sight of the few which remained alive.
Shuddering at the fairly sickening idea, he quickly headed out of the lab and back the way he'd come. It was obvious that his friends hadn't gone that way.
ooo
"I don't think the creature that attacked Alyssa at the park is here," Penny deduced, shaking her head as she and Rudy left the room and began retracing their steps using the marks Rudy had drawn.
"I don't think so either… We would have seen it by now," Rudy grumbled in frustrated manner, clearly disappointed that they search had not upturned any results.
"Or at least some sign of it," Penny agreed.
It wasn't long before they reached the point where Rudy had first started drawing red marks, knowing that they would have to find the remainder of the path to the exit themselves. Neither were worried, as both were fairly sure they remembered the way and Rudy could use his chalk to help them escape if it came to that.
Making their way down the first staircase and out to a hallway they knew was near the exit, the two stopped suddenly as they heard a voice echoing from somewhere deeper into the building. At first Rudy tensed and his heart rate quickened, wondering if there was something there after all, before he realized that the voice was Snap's, and confusion marked by a frown replaced his alarm.
"Snap?" Penny cried, just as surprised. When there was no sudden response, she whirled to Rudy with interested eyes. "What's he doing here?" In her voice was obvious concern, which Rudy largely reflected.
"I don't know," Rudy began, already hurriedly heading in the direction of Snap's voice as he broke into a jog-like run. "But we'd better find him!"
As they sped in the direction the sound had come from, Penny quickly checked her watch, realizing with alarm that she and Rudy had been in the building for longer than she'd thought. They would definitely need to start heading to the park soon so that they could then return home, and she decided to share the information with Rudy once they had reunited with Snap. In the meantime, they got lost a few times while trying to find their friend.
As she looked up, her eyes widened in alarm as she noticed, up ahead, a gaping hole where the floor of the hallway was meant to be. Her shock was fairly sudden, as she was sure that this hole had not been there the first time. It was then that she realized that they had come a completely different way, and it dawned on her just how easy it was to get lost.
"Rudy!" she shouted, but Rudy, who was a few paces ahead of her, had already stopped, only just noticing the hole amidst the darkness, as the helmets they were wearing had not been able to illuminate it until they were standing only a few feet away.
"He couldn't have gone this way," Rudy determined, leaning out over the edge a little and peering downward, seeing nothing but the faint outlines of broken pieces of metal. He realized that, due to the echoes and their absence of a previous encounter with the opening, that they went the wrong way in the first place. He suddenly hoped that they weren't lost; though he could easily use the chalk to get them out, it would still make finding Snap difficult, especially if he was not nearby.
They turned around and doubled back, taking a different route through a small room and ending up in a big area that proved to Rudy just how massive the place was. The idea entered his mind to draw a homing bacon in order to find Snap, and he was just about to do so before he heard his name being called again and his friend appeared in one of the doorways on the other side of the room.
"Rudy? Penny?" he gasped, surprise crossing his face as he noticed the two of them standing rigidly on the other side of the room.
"Snap, what are you doing here?" Rudy questioned, giving Snap a relieved smile as he crossed the room toward him, glad that a high-set window gave the place some light. As he and Penny approached, however, they could see that Snap did not look nearly as relieved as they did, even though it was clear that neither of his friends were harmed.
Rudy furrowed his brow. "What's wrong?" he asked as he reached him. Before the blue and white Zoner responded, however, Rudy remembered that he and Penny had not exactly been fast, and decided that his friend was owed an explanation. "We didn't mean to be gone so long," he hurriedly began, but was cut off there.
"Rudy, there's somethin' back there I think you need to see," Snap explained immediately, seemingly not interested in Rudy's reasons for spending longer than he thought he would. A seed of concern planted itself in his mind. "Somethin' really weird's goin' on here." Snap indicated the hallway he came out of, and Rudy and Penny gave each other glances of curiosity with a tad of worry.
"We don't have a lot of time…" Penny reminded them apprehensively, but she could tell by the look on Snap's face that whatever it was, it had clearly worried him, and she decided to save the details of the time they had left until after their investigation.
Rudy nodded before looking back at Snap, who looked completely worn out. He wasn't sure how long he had been searching the building, but he knew that with how much they had been walking earlier, he would be definitely be tired. He thought about suggesting for him to wait for them while they investigated, but he knew that Snap would probably be worried if they went alone again, especially given they had just split up.
As they began to make their way to the room Snap directed them towards, Rudy decided to draw them a quickly-constructed three-person scooter to make it both easier for his friend, and quicker, as he was aware of the withering time.
Rudy and Penny weren't sure what to expect when they came upon the room, but after they dismounted the scooter and helped Snap to the entrance, what they saw when they pushed past the door and into the room Snap had discovered certainly wasn't it. The two stared in shocked disbelief, and Rudy shook his head, not even sure what he was looking at. "What is all this stuff doing here?" he cried, gesturing to the rows of tables while the other two looked around nervously.
Penny walked down the row of tables at a reasonably slow pace, examining each as Snap gave his friends a brief explanation of what he had found, but left the majority of it unmentioned for them to find out by reading the study notes themselves. Angling toward the desk, Penny made her way over to it, Snap and Rudy following her. They watched as she picked up the notebook Snap had been looking at before and laid eyes on him, her eyebrows drawn in caution. Rudy frowned a little in interest and stood beside her, tilting his head to read the words on the page. Simultaneously their eyes widened, and Snap watched with expectation as their faces grew spots of horror.
"They're testing these…poisons…on these insects…" Penny breathed in disbelief, setting it down and quickly looking through the other notes.
"Why the heck are they doing that?" Rudy demanded, shocked by the finding. He glanced to the many jars on the nearby tables and watched them in disgust.
"I don't know…" Penny whispered, pointing suddenly at some of the entries. "Perished…not immune?" She looked up at Snap in confusion.
"I think they were experimenting on them to try an' make them immune to those pesticides," Snap offered in a serious tone, indicating the jars containing what was clearly some sort of poison.
His friends stared between him, the jars on the tables, and the book on the desk before them. Rudy turned to Penny. "What do you think, Penny? It sounds to me like Snap's right…"
"Yes, that…that has to be right," she said, her eyes still on the notes. She set it down as soon as something else popped into her view, under the desk. "Look here!" She held out another small notebook that caught Snap's attention as well as Rudy's; based on his reaction, Penny could tell that Snap had not seen it in his brief excursion earlier. It was just a series of sloppy, illegible notes, which neither of them had time to read before Penny continued, "Whoever is using this place is testing each insect with more than one substance. I think they are trying to see if some sort of cure or antidote they've invented worked…but I'm not sure why they'd be trying multiple on the same insect. Their way of conducting this experiment doesn't make any sense. They clearly don't have much of an idea of what they're doing if they haven't even-"
"Penny, I think we should go," Rudy began, realizing as well that they were running out of time. "I don't think anyone's been here for days, but…" He glanced around at the many jars holding poisons in them. "I have a bad feeling about this." He gestured to the containers. "Maybe we should get rid of these."
"Get rid of them how?" Penny asked, understanding his urgency and reluctantly leaving the desk. He looked lost for words at her question. "We don't have any Real World water, and I'm not exactly sure where we'd take all these jars where they wouldn't be able to harm anyone."
"An incinerator?" Rudy proposed, knowing the idea was not exactly ideal. Penny only shook her head.
"We don't know how it would react with the fire…and we don't have much time, Rudy; we can't really do anything about this now," she shrugged.
"Maybe we should alert the police about this?" Snap wondered, thinking that, given they were tight for time and they had no real way to know how to dispose of it, warning the authorities about it would be the most appropriate thing to do. As well as being able to discard the poison, he thought that perhaps it would stop the experiments on the insects as well.
"Yes," Penny agreed, nodding as he mentioned the other points, "that seems like the best idea." Even while knowing what the experimenter's vague goal was, the whole situation didn't make a lot of sense, and like Rudy, she also had a bad feeling about it.
As Snap again glanced about the room, he felt a swirling mess of unpleasantness gather in his gut. He held his bottom lip between his teeth and scanned his eyes over the jars again, spotting something similar to a fist-sized cricket scrambling at the side of the container it was trapped inside. He cringed as he noted that three of its legs oozed green liquid, knowing that it was unnatural. Suddenly he flinched at the sound of a faded scream, something freakishly similar to a voice he would hear come from one of his friends, and witnessed it ricochet violently off the walls of the jar before falling still, upside-down, on the floor of the container.
He glanced to Rudy and Penny, who had clearly watched the same ordeal take place, and who were equally in shock. The bad feeling in his stomach had every right to be there; the whole laboratory was frightening, eerie and overall wrong. He found himself glancing to the entrance of the room in fear of somebody suddenly walking in and seeing them. He would feel trapped, and realized that he was more afraid of being experimented on than being attacked on the spot. The fact that the lab held many doses of poison was sickening enough, and the idea of being exposed to any of them against his will made him feel dizzy. If his friends could spare more time in ChalkZone, and if they had any idea how to shut the laboratory down, then he was sure they would do it. The police could certainly handle it, and if nothing else, they could put a stop to the horrific experiments taking place. If insects were the subjects now, Snap could only begin to imagine what the pseudo-scientist would experiment on next.
"Come on," Rudy began, snapping his friend out of his trance, "we need to get to the park."
Penny and Snap nodded, and the three began to make their way to the exit. As wrong as it felt to leave such equipment set up, and the innocent insects trapped, they knew that messing with the experiment's ingredients and subjects was not a good idea, especially with little enough time to reach the park and then return home.
Penny's mind turned as she went over the details of the notes she had found, wishing there was some way that they could help the situation further. "This doesn't add up!" she growled in frustration, catching the attention of her friends. "What about the creature that attacked Alyssa? We found nothing about it here…"
"Yeah…" Rudy mused as he too considered it.
"Something's not right here," Snap added suspiciously.
Once back outside, they got back in Rudy's vehicle and headed in the direction of Canyon Park. "Penny," began Rudy, "how much time do we have to stop at the park before we go back? While we're there, I want to ask Alyssa a few more questions."
"I think we have enough time if we make it quick, but, Rudy, I think she's told us all she can," Penny replied.
"I just have some things in mind," he concluded, and Penny gave a sigh and nodded.
"We should hurry."
With that in mind, Rudy sped up, following the tracks they'd previously made in the sand over the flat, dusty landscape.
ooo
Only a few minutes later, they came to the park. Rudy stopped the car in the first parking space he could see and he and Penny got out, keeping in mind that they didn't have much time. He advised Snap, who had walked around so much that his leg was whining at him with pain, to stay in the car while they spoke to Alyssa and checked the park's fortifications. The blue and white Zoner, however, was not so keen on remaining behind and insisted that he accompany them.
The toucan manning the entry booth gave a startled squawk when Rudy and Penny hurried past the line of Zoners and into the park, also earning many shouts and grumbles of disapproval.
"Excuse me! Sorry…" Rudy quickly muttered to the Zoners as he passed, and Penny gave the toucan an apologetic glance paired with a shrug.
Ruffling his feathers, the colorful bird watched as Snap gave him a sheepish grin before edging inside after his friends. He was nearly stopped by a Zoner with abnormally large muscles, but his condition presumably changed the Zoner's mind. The toucan, unable to reach Snap to stop him, crossed his feathered arms as he glared at the three of them venturing farther away. "How rude. Aark!"
Before coming to the tunnel, they veered off into the open area containing the lot of stands, along with crowds of tourists and visitors. They weaved their way toward the bookstand, but upon spotting it, they realized that this time, the Zoner working there was an anteater.
"Excuse me," Penny began, running up to him and panting between words, "do you know where Alyssa is?"
"She's over there," he directed, pointing a claw toward the area where the tunnel was and the trails began, which, from their point of view, was partially blocked by boulders. As the anteater salesman began asking if she wanted to buy a book, Penny raced back over to her friends. "Sorry, maybe another time!" she called back.
"Wait," Snap began, and his friends turned to witness his tired, wilting form. He cringed a little.
"Do you want to wait here while we go to see Alyssa?" Rudy asked, concerned for his friend. "We'll be right back for you."
Snap considered his words before nodding. "Yeah, I better. Just don't take too long."
"We won't!" he reassured as he and Penny left, breaking into a run.
As they passed through the tunnels, earning odd looks from Zoners who had seen them cut through the line at the park's entrance, they could see the neck of a large dinosaur-like creature raise above the rocks. They thought that a tour must have been about to start.
They passed one tour group and went around a collection of boulders to see another open area where several large dinosaurs were gathered, each very brightly colored and looking as if they had been drawn by artists of various skill. Around the dinosaurs was a humanoid Zoner with blonde hair, who was tending to one of the creatures' legs with an oversized bandage. A smile was stretched across her face: Alyssa.
"Alyssa!" Rudy called as he and Penny raced toward her, and the Zoner's attention was fully on them by the time they reached her.
"Oh, it's you two again," she said, trying to sound cheery but was obviously a little nervous. "I'm working my normal job with the dinosaurs now. They said I wasn't allowed to run the book stand anymore… But that's okay. This is what I'm good at." She gave a small smile and scanned the group, a light frown touching her face. "Is your friend okay? Did you take him to a hospital? I know he was very unwell!"
"Uh…yeah," Rudy stated, having only just remembered her reaction to Snap earlier in the day. He was glad that Snap had stayed back at the bookstand for this reason; they didn't have much time and he didn't want to go through the previous conversation about Snap needing a hospital again. Trying to dismiss her concern, he answered, "He's okay."
"Okay?" she replied, sounding probably more shocked than Rudy deemed necessary, but not more shocked than he had expected. "He's in a hospital. Of course he's not okay!" He and Penny held their breaths as the Zoner began to ponder. "You know, maybe I should visit him-"
"NO!" Rudy shouted, frustration getting the better of him as he slapped his hand over his forehead. He gritted his teeth so hard that he thought they might shatter, but tried to suppress his anxiousness as he exhaled slowly, reminding himself not to take his stress for time out on others…even if they were irritating. "I mean…he doesn't need visitors," he quickly corrected himself.
"He…needs to rest," Penny continued, stepping in to add to Rudy's argument. Alyssa paused for a second to think, and then seemed satisfied with the answer, but was still obviously worried. "I promise, he will be all right. Now, we wanted to ask you some things regarding the incident when you were attacked."
"Yeah," Rudy began, "we found someone who knew where this creature was hidden. This Zoner led us to its lair, but…we didn't find any sign of any sort of creature like what you described. But we found something else."
Penny nodded, and gave the confused Zoner a quick description of what she had found in the lab, watching nervously as small crowd of Zoners ready to go on a tour lined up near where the dinosaurs, who were attached to large but comfortable-looking carts, were waiting. "He also said this creature attacked Zoners in the factory recently," she finished. Alyssa looked confused, as if she wasn't sure what to think. "Is there anything more you can tell us about this creature?" Penny asked. "Anything you might have—"
"Wait a minute…" the blonde Zoner started. "It couldn't have attacked the factories." At her words, Rudy and Penny blinked several times. The Zoner remained silent for a few moments longer, giving the two friends time to convey their confusion to one another through their expressions. "Serilda makes sure no one gets in. There's a twenty five foot electric fence around it," she continued, raising her eyebrows as if a little impressed by it herself. "And the animal…well, I saw it moving about in the dark. It didn't have any climbing abilities. It couldn't even stand upright on its back legs. It didn't have digging abilities either… I even saw it struggle a bit where the sand was deep in the cave." She adopted a harder frown, relatively quizzical. "Are you sure he didn't mean a different creature?"
"Wait…what?" Rudy stammered, and as he went through the information in his mind, he could only draw one possible conclusion. He glanced to Penny, who was obviously thinking the same thing. It suddenly dawned on him that Franky had been lying to them the entire time. For what purpose he could only begin to guess, but he was nearly positive that the squirrel Zoner had nothing to do with the building or the lab, or he would not have led them there. The creature certainly was not behind what they found in the laboratory if it wasn't even capable of standing upright or using its forelegs like human limbs. He considered that Franky could have merely been mistaken, but he had seemed so sure of the location that Rudy had to admit it seemed far more like a lie… There had been no uncertainty in Franky's directions; he had wanted to lead them away for a reason. But did that mean…the creature they were tracking had something to do with the factories?
"You mean to tell us that this was the only attack…anywhere near here?" Penny began worriedly. "Including the factories?"
"If something did attack the factories, the staff at the park would have heard about it," Alyssa continued with a shrug. "If there's any trouble, they always assume it came from us first."
"This doesn't make any sense…" Rudy muttered, and Alyssa only looked more worried.
"Do you think it might come back?" she asked and stepped forward in some display of minor desperation.
"We…don't know," Rudy admitted, wishing he had a more substantial answer. "We didn't find any trace of it." When he saw that the Zoner was clearly concerned, and so much so that she might have been constantly bothered by it, he made an effort to put her mind at ease. "But I made it harder for anything to get into the park this time, so it shouldn't bother you again." At least, he thought, if it couldn't climb or dig, the reinforcements he drew would likely work. How it got in the cave in the first place was still a mystery, but he was at least a little reassured by the fact that it hadn't caused much damage.
"Well…okay…" Alyssa responded quietly. She turned to look at the dinosaurs, craning her neck, and then glanced at the line of Zoners. "I need to start the tour now, but if you or your friend needs any help, I could-"
"No, he's fine," Penny replied, shaking her head. "We need to go now anyway." She glanced to her watch to pretend to check it, despite knowing already what the time was. Her gaze traveled to the dinosaurs as well. She noticed that several of them had bandaged limbs or necks, remembering Alyssa had been applying some when they first spotted her, and she turned to the Zoner curiously. "Did…any of them get hurt in the attempted attack?" she asked.
"No," Alyssa replied casually, glancing up at them, "at least…I don't think so. I saw some of them scratching their legs and nibbling on some scales and thought it might be a wound, so I put some bandages on just in case. I thought I should probably carry them around with me from now on." She smiled as she met one of the prehistoric animals' eyes. "You can never have enough bandages!"
Penny just sighed and shook her head, feeling that it was useless to argue. At least the dinosaurs didn't seem to mind, and as Alyssa walked back over toward them, they responded in an excited, enthusiastic manner. Rudy and Penny watched with a bit of surprise as she began to order them into a line with ease, impressed by the fact that they obeyed her commands without hesitance or confusion. They had almost expected her to be a little incompetent, but she appeared to have a solid bond with them that was as powerful as any between a master and their pet.
After they slipped away as she started the trail, they joined with Snap again at the bookstand and headed back to their plane.
ooo
After arriving back in the restored section ChalkZone City, which they were currently walking through, they had informed the police of what they found and were assured that they would investigate. Realizing that there wasn't much else they could do, the three had reluctantly come to accept that, whatever was behind what had happened the previous day, they weren't going to find out without more information. In the end, they had figured the events were probably unrelated after all, and hoped that the police could successfully take care of the robot suspect they had been pursuing in the jungle. Snap was still irked that he was unable to do anything more about the laboratory and its experiments, but forced himself to be content with the police taking matters into their hands.
"We need to be getting back," Penny told Rudy worriedly. "My mom wanted us back by dinnertime…and we've only got a few minutes," she added, looking to her friend with alarm.
"No sweat," he told her with a smile, although not having fully realized they were cutting it so close. He glanced toward Snap with a little uncertainty. "Uh…do you want me to take you back to your house really quick before we go?"
Snap shook his head dismissively. "It's okay. I can get there myself. But, uh, I wouldn't mind gettin' there some way that isn't on foot, so I'll hail a cab."
"Okay," Rudy replied, pausing to glance down a few streets toward the part of the city that wasn't yet completely cleared up. He knew there was still a lot of work to do to fully rebuild the city, even though a lot of progress had already been made. He turned away after a moment, remembering how urgent it was that he and Penny got to the portal. He knew that Snap would likely be able to find transportation in the city himself, so after saying goodbye to his friend, he and Penny climbed up the small metal staircase leading to the roof of the building by the police station which held a helipad and was where they had landed their plane.
They hadn't gotten halfway up when they heard screaming. Rudy immediately frowned and turned toward the sound, as did Penny, but though he could see a few Zoners running, he could not tell what it was that had spooked them. He conveyed his confusion to his friend, who also looked about and was unable to find the source of the disruption, and both suddenly felt wary.
"What was that?" Penny questioned, although she knew Rudy did not have an answer."
Nevertheless, his determination to seek one was clear. "I don't know, but we better find out... It might have been something bad."
Hurriedly they ran up the rest of the stairs, their shoes hammering the metal as their minds swarmed with possibilities, and finally reached the top. Rudy stood on the roof's edge, and as he cast his eye out across the parts of the city he could see from where he was, he spotted something rather startling.
Swarming at one end of a nearby street and heading toward a crowd of Zoners was a cluster of airborne creatures that he had never seen before. He could tell Penny had spotted them as well, as she too froze beside him. The incessant buzzing their wings created almost unnerved him, and as he stared at them from where he was, he could see that they were not simple a group of Zoners wishing to pass through.
He could not see them clear enough to identify them from where he was, but he knew that whatever those things were, they did not seem harmless. He wasn't sure what they were capable of, and as much as he didn't want to find out, he knew he couldn't simply leave ChalkZone at a time like this. Unfortunately, going back to the Real World would have to wait.