Chapter 12: New Problem

After flipping through the files in the 'BBI' drawer, Elli pushed it back into the cabinet and gave Poppy a fearful glance.

"Why did you show me this?" Elli demanded.

"Because you need to know what you're dealing with," replied Poppy. "All the living toys in this factory were once human, before they became experiments."

"Experiments? For what?"

"I'm not sure. When I was created, it was a fluke; a miracle that shouldn't have happened. But after the Prototype—

"The Prototype? What's that?"

Poppy shuttered. "We should leave. The workers will be here any minute."

Elli noticed a door nearby and pulled on it.

"It won't budge," Elli said. "How do we get out of here?"

"Use this," said Poppy as she used the desk chair to get off the desk.

Back on the ground, she pulled something from underneath the desk with her tiny hands. In the desk lamp's light, Elli saw a GrabPack like the ones she and the kids used for Wack-a-Wuggy. Only this one had three extra arms and longer lengths of wire.

"Hold on," Elli exclaimed. "What's a GrabPack doing here? I thought those were just for the Wack-a-Wuggy Game."

"You're wrong," Poppy claimed. "The factory workers use them for a variety of tasks: opening doors, maneuvering over deep holes, even lighting dark places. Each arm has a different function depending on the task that needs to get done."

"That's amazing! We could use this GrabPack to escape for sure."

"One GrabPack won't be sufficient. You'll need at least two or three."

"Can you get them?"

"It will take some time due to my size, but I can try." Poppy then shook her head. "No, I can't!"

"What?"

"Just use the GrabPack to get out of here! And leave it in the vent before you go back to bed."

Unsure of what to make of Poppy's sudden change of mind, Elli put on the GrabPack. It was a lot heavier than the ones she was used to, but she managed to grip the edge of the vent with the red and blue arms. Pulling herself up, she crawled back through the vent.

Reaching the corner where she found the hidden tape, she took the GrabPack off and crawled back through the vent opening. Elli quickly looked at the clock on the wall, which showed 5:30 AM.

"Poppy must have woken me up around 5," Elli guessed. "And Mommy said CatNap goes to sleep before dawn, which is 5:00 AM. That would explain why he didn't show up when I snuck over to the vent with Poppy."

An hour and a half later, the morning announcement went off and the kids got out of bed. Elli was the last to arrive for breakfast, which Mommy took notice of.

"You're late, Elli," Mommy scolded.

"Sorry, Mommy," Elli said, yawning from not getting enough sleep. "It won't happen again."

"Fortunately, you showed up just as Mommy was about to make an important announcement."

"What important announcement?" Rez didn't like the sound of this.

Mommy put on a big smile. "As of today, you will be getting an assistant caretaker."

"But we have DogDay," Nathan pointed out.

"He does help Mommy from time to time, but he's mostly in charge of caring for the toddlers," Mommy corrected. "What Mommy is talking about is someone like Miss Brooks."

"Miss Brooks was scary!" Pete objected.

"Don't worry, Pete," Mommy said, stretching her hand to rub Pete's head gently. "Mommy promises this new assistant won't be as scary as Miss Brooks. You can come out now!"

Through the doorway to the living room emerged a large toy with pink fuzzy hair, floppy limbs, big eyes, red lips, and had a blue ribbon tied around its neck.

"Children, meet Kissy Missy," Mommy introduced. "She was made around the same time as CatNap, but you never saw her because she was patrolling the upper levels of the factory with her male counterpart Huggy Wuggy. Recently, though, the factory workers decided to transfer her here. So please, make Kissy feel welcome in our humble home!"

Immediately, the younger kids crowded around Kissy. She seemed nervous by their presence at first, but she smiled and patted the kids with her yellow hands.


"Well, this isn't good!" Rez complained as he, Elli, and Nathan rode the train to the Game Station. "Now we have another giant toy to worry about."

"It seems awfully suspicious, don't you think?" Nathan said. "That another toy gets put in charge as an assistant caretaker after two years since the last one?"

"Maybe Mommy is onto us," Elli fretted.

Nathan wasn't convinced. "If she knew what we were planning, she would've already called us out. My guess is the factory workers found out about the misplaced bag and think Mommy needs help keeping better track of us kids."

"Yeah, the bag was gone when we examined the door," Elli remembered. "It must've been taken by one of the factory workers before we got back from the Game Station."

"Though we still don't know if the body really was dragged from the door by the Poppy doll or not," Rez said. "I mean, that doll was really tiny."

"I think she's stronger than she looks," Elli suggested.

"Why do you say that?" Nathan asked. "Did you find her?"

Elli wanted to say, 'yes.' But remembering what Nathan said about not trusting any living toys, she was worried he wouldn't like it if he knew she snuck out of bed earlier that morning with Poppy.

"Never mind," Elli said. "Forget I said anything."

After an uneventful time in the Game Station, the three decided to use recess to look through the school's library for information on the outside world. But aside from books on general information such as geography, no magazines or newspapers on current events were present.

"What's the matter, kids?" Miss Delight asked, startling the three. "You look disappointed."

To be continued…