“Dr. Hellion’s not gonna like that.” Piper turned away in dismay, only to discover that her actions were being carefully observed by a little black cricket. He was peering at her from behind a glass container, and looked to be the exact same cricket that Piper had been introduced to in the elevator. With the same soulful eyes, his antennae moved forward just as before when she crouched down to look at him.
“So that’s where you’ve been hiding!” Piper was excited to see him again. This time the little black cricket didn’t come to the side of the cage to greet her and Piper soon saw why. A gooey glue-like substance had been splattered all across his legs, binding them together and fixing them to the cage. The cricket was courageously waging a battle against the goo by thrashing his legs with all his might. Unfortunately, the more he fought, the more the sticky glue was spreading across his body.
“Hey, little guy. Remember me? Hold on there. You keep moving like that and you’ll be covered in the stuff. Here, I’ll help you out. Hold still now.” Piper opened the cage and plucked the cricket out and onto her hand. “There, see, it’s not so bad.” Piper held him at eye level and girl and cricket regarded each other. “You need a little bit of help maybe?”
The cricket gazed at Piper, unblinkingly. Piper found some nearby Q-tips and used them to absorb most of the chemical. “Who’d go and do something like that? It’s not right. It’s just not right.”
Grateful for the assistance, the black cricket trustingly remained still and allowed Piper to daub away much of his grief. Piper shook her head at the thought of someone hurting such innocent and beautiful creatures.
Delicately cupping her hand around the cricket, Piper was determined to bring him back to show Dr. Hellion what was going on. This laboratory was nothing short of a torture chamber. From her position alone, Piper was forced to witness one atrocity after another—a purple swan swam in a pool of bleach, an eight-armed monkey had all but two of his arms in a straitjacket, and a walking daffodil was leashed to a stake to keep it planted. The more Piper saw, the less she wanted to see, and the more it was painfully obvious that many terrible things were going on in the testing laboratory. Such torture and inhumane treatment of any living creature was hard for Piper to stomach or comprehend.
Bang! Bang!
A loud thumping sound startled Piper and she ducked down out of sight, convinced that Moo and Jessie were about to catch her red-handed. The little black cricket fidgeted about nervously.
Bang! Bang!
The source of the noise was a small room at the end of the row, where Piper was crouched. The more she listened, the more it was apparent that the noise was somewhat unusual. The sort of noise that wasn’t of human origin.
Bang. Crash.
The door to the room was cracked open and Piper crept forward and peeked inside. Unfortunately, the room was pitch-black, making it impossible for her to see anything.
Bang! Bang!
With a trembling hand, Piper quietly pushed the heavy door open slowly, inch by inch. Light from the laboratory spilled in and cut a swath down the room in direct proportion to the opening of the door.
Bang. Bang. Piper held her breath. Against the back wall of the examining room was a large beast cloaked in the blackness of shadow.
A trembling moved up and down Piper’s legs and her breathing came in terrified gasps. She could hear the creature breathe too, and through the darkness see its eyes watching her.
“Howdy.”
Tentatively moving one foot in front of the other, she took one step into the room, and then another. Silence.
“Whatcha doing in here?” One step more. Silence.
“You wanna come out of that corner? It’s mighty dark. Me, I don’t like the dark all that much. I’d turn a light on for you if I could find it.” By this point Piper was in the middle of the room, halfway between the beast and the door. She dared not go any farther. She could feel it watching her and sizing her up.
Bang! Bang!
Piper flinched, expecting the beast to lash out. In actuality, it was shifting its position and uncoiling its long neck. Then, slowly, the beast stretched that neck out toward the small, trembling girl in the center of the room. As soon as its head hit the shaft of light, Piper saw that the beast was actually a beautiful silver giraffe! He was covered in dirt and looked terribly thin and tired, but there was no mistaking his regal beauty. He stretched his neck out and came face-to-face with Piper.
“You’ve got yourself in an awful fix. Don’tcha?”
Piper’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could see that thick and ghastly chains were binding the giraffe’s body to the floor and cutting into his flesh. His long legs were cramped and arranged at odd angles—the banging noises came from his attempts to get comfortable.
The once proud and beautiful creature was broken and beaten and Piper inwardly raged with a ferocity at the terrible injustice. She wished she could break the chains with her bare hands and free him that very instant.
Instead she used her hand to gently stroke the giraffe’s head. “Hey, there.”
He leaned into her touch, hungry for the gentleness of a kind word and gesture. Piper brushed the silver patches on his head, and they were so smooth that it felt like stroking velvet.
“You’re so soft. Beautiful.” She caressed the giraffe’s delicate face and he held still, lest he miss even a moment of her sweet and gentle attention. While there was no way for Piper to know it, her kindness was the first he had felt in a long time, and it took his mind off of the agony of cramped and crumpled legs and the heavy chains that held him to the ground. His sad heart was lifted and the room mysteriously filled with a flickering light that grew brighter and steadier.
Initially Piper thought the overhead light in the room had been turned on, until she realized that the giraffe’s silver spots were literally glowing like spotlights.
“Holy moly, you’re like a giant lightbulb!” The beacon inside the giraffe, activated by Piper’s kindheartedness, was blinding.
“Don’t you worry yourself. I’ll get some help for you and you’ll be outta here in a jiffy. Soon as Dr. Hellion hears about this, she won’t stand for it. You just wait and see.”
A gruff male voice came from the lab just outside of the giraffe’s room. “Set up the new experiments between the insects and plants.”
Jessie and Moo had returned! Piper quickly rushed to the door and eased it closed so that she could peep out without being seen. Moo was pushing a dolly full of specimen containers holding harried-looking spiders the size of golf balls. As they crawled about, they rapidly changed color from fluorescent green to orange to yellow, and then back again.
Piper was on the verge of being discovered, and there was no telling what Moo and Jessie might do if they found her. Rushing back to the giraffe, she gave him one last pat. “I’ll be back. You hear? I’m not gonna leave you like this. Just you hold on.” Then as quiet as a mouse, Piper slid out of the giraffe’s room, crouching low and out of sight. With the little black cricket in one hand, Piper scuttled from one workstation to the next, making a beeline for the red doors. Only two rows shy of success, the red doors came bursting open and a team of scientists entered. Thinking fast, Piper ducked out of sight and remained hidden under a table as the bevy of scientists stopped inches away from her position and conferred.
“Specimen four-two-alpha is still not responding to treatment protocols. Clinical trials show no improvement or any change whatsoever,” a bald scientist smartly reported in an overly educated, nasal voice.
“This is a compiled list of the specimen’s pertinent data,” a second scientist continued. “Note here the use of electric shock treatment, chemical cocktails, hydrotherapy, and of course, physical restraint. None provided any statistically significant results.”
“Mmmm.”
Piper froze.
The last voice was low but familiar, and it sent a chill down Piper’s spine. Her line of sight was obstructed by several white lab coat
s and she craned for a better view.
“Exterminate it then. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t dedicate resources to life-forms who resist rehabilitation.”
Once again, it was that same familiar voice that spoke. It was not only familiar, but unmistakable. Piper knew it all too well but even so refused to believe what her senses were telling her.
“Two separate teams have been dispatched to capture additional species today,” the soft and gentle voice continued. “Uncooperative specimens must be destroyed to make room. By whatever means necessary.”
The lab coats parted and Piper saw . . .
NO!!!!!!! It was a silent scream. The sort that your soul yells when a piece of it is crushed and dies. NO!!!!!!!
As always, Letitia Hellion’s face was breathtakingly beautiful, and she was the very picture of composure. Even as she ordered the extermination of exquisite and delicate life-forms helpless under her care, she did so with the same ease you might ask for more sugar in your tea.
“I have compiled a list of specimens”—Dr. Hellion handed out pages to the scientists who nodded their heads and took notes—“that must be collected and terminated. Let’s begin with specimen four-two-alpha.” Dr. Hellion led the way and the group followed.
Piper wondered what had happened to all of the oxygen in the room, because none of it was getting into her lungs. How was this possible? Dr. Hellion was nothing short of an angel, or at least she looked like an angel. But would an angel use words like destroy and terminate? Did angels bind giraffes, slowly kill roses, and torture crickets? Dr. Hellion’s outwardly beautiful surface had deceived Piper. She’d believed in her, loved her, and had placed her very life in her hands, and now, God help her, she was at her mercy. If Dr. Hellion was capable of such things, then what was in store for Piper? What terrible things would Dr. Hellion do to her and the other kids?
And yet . . . despite everything, a part of Piper wouldn’t believe what her senses told her. The tender, dreaming part of her held out hope that she was wrong and mistaken and that Dr. Hellion was the savior she presented herself to be.
Dr. Hellion came to a stop at the lab station where specimen four-two-alpha should have been waiting. But specimen four-two-alpha was not waiting. Instead, the group found an open case with white chemicals in the bottom of it. Dr. Hellion immediately looked to the team leader for an explanation.
“But . . .” The scientist blathered, looking around the experiment station. “It was right here an hour ago.”
“What’s the physical description, Dr. Fields?” Another scientist took the chart from Dr. Fields and flipped through it.
“It’s the voculus romalea microptera,” Dr. Fields quickly explained, scrambling about the station. “Easily mistaken for the common field cricket.”
Shaken from her stunned trance, Piper looked at the black cricket sitting in the palm of her hand and swallowed hard. This is not good, Piper quickly realized.
“Dr. Fields, the specimen has been released.” Dr. Hellion stated the obvious.
“But . . . but . . .” Dr. Fields spluttered. “We’ve never, it’s never happened before.”
“Be that as it may, I’m alerting security.” Dr. Hellion flipped open her phone. “Agent Agent, we have a situation in—” Dr. Hellion paused in midsentence as her eye rested upon a single stray Q-tip. Very carefully, she lifted it between two slender fingers and turned it around. A hushed silence fell over all the gathered scientists as the full implication of the Q-tip became clear to them. “—ah yes, Agent Agent, correction, we’ve got a red alert and a possible intruder on level four. I want all surveillance tapes and . . .”
Piper didn’t exactly know what a red alert was, but she knew that it wasn’t good and that the place was soon going to be crawling with agents. She had to act fast or be trapped. A steady stream of lab personnel had been moving in and out of the red doors since Dr. Hellion’s arrival, preventing an escape without being seen. Piper slid the little black cricket into her pocket and ever so quietly whispered to herself, “I’m as light as a cloud, as free as a bird. I’m part of the sky and I can fly.” When the tingling started, she reached on top of the table above her head and grasped the first heavy object she came upon. Without so much as a glance at it, she tossed it to the opposite side of the room.
BANG! A glass beaker exploded, scaring the science team out of their wits. Taking advantage of the distraction, Piper leapt across the aisle and then dashed across the room until she came to the panel of frosted windows that overlooked the atrium, a dizzying number of stories far, far below. With wild abandon, Piper threw herself out an open window.
Dr. Hellion turned on a dime. She saw something out of the corner of her eye. That much was certain. She ran to the window and looked down and then up and then side to side. She saw . . . nothing.
“Agent Agent, I want the exact current location of Piper McCloud.” Dr. Hellion hadn’t gotten to be head of the facility for no good reason—she knew that someone had been in the lab. “In my office? Thank you.”
It required every ounce of Piper’s energy to fly into Dr. Hellion’s office through the open window. Her body felt like it weighed a hundred million pounds. She hadn’t flown in months and it was almost as though she couldn’t remember how. “Like the birds, I will fly.” She said it over and over again. “I’m part of the sky and I can fly.”
Panting and puffing and pushing, her feet touched down and her first thought was to call for help. The telephone was sitting in plain view on Dr. Hellion’s desk and Piper immediately reached for it and dialed home.
It must have been hours before the phone began to ring.
“C’mon, Ma, pick up.” They rarely received any phone calls from one month to the next at the farm and it would probably catch her mother off guard to hear the unfamiliar ringing. That is, if she was close enough to the phone to hear it at all.
One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Four rings.
“Please hear it. Please be there.” Piper expected Dr. Hellion to burst through the door at any moment.
Ten rings. Eleven rings. Twelve rings.
“Hello?” Betty McCloud said on the other end of the phone and Piper almost wept with joy.
“Ma—”
Click. The phone went dead.
Piper gasped and looked down to find a finger resolutely pressing the disconnect button on the phone. That finger belonged to Conrad Harrington III.
“What are you doing? Don’t you know what’s going on here?”
Conrad didn’t react, but instead took the handset away from Piper and, with quick movements, took it apart. A moment later he plucked a small, round disc the size of a button from the earpiece. He held it out so that Piper could see it.
“Bugged.”
Piper looked at Conrad as though seeing him for the first time and, in truth, this was the first time he was actually letting her see him. Everything about him was different. He looked taller and more confident and nothing like the whiny, mean child who had been making her life miserable for the last few weeks.
“But . . . what—”
“Shhhh. Don’t speak. Just listen.”
Conrad reached into his pocket and pulled out Piper’s little wooden bird, silently handing it to her.
Piper clutched the precious wooden bird to her heart and tears obscured her vision. Was nothing she knew or saw real? With her own two eyes she’d watched Conrad throw her bird down the garbage chute. “But how—?”
“I created a replica,” Conrad quickly explained, putting the reassembled phone in place. “I took your bird with one hand and threw the replica in the rubbish with the other.”
Piper’s mouth opened, but there were no words.
“There isn’t time. Dr. Hellion is on her way. She’ll suspect you but she’ll have no proof. I was watching your progress on the surveillance cameras and know everything. I’ve done what I can but you must follow my lead and make sure the cricket stays in your pocket. If she catches you or it, all will be lo
st. Just do what I tell you to.”
That was when Piper knew that Conrad knew everything, had always known. That he was actually trying to protect her and that they needed each other.
And that was when Piper McCloud’s greatest enemy became her only ally.
As fate would have it, Piper was given less than four seconds to retroactively relive all of the events of her last months in a staggering journey that reordered by 180 degrees everything she’d accepted as real and true to be fake and lies, so that her head was spinning and her knees were shaking and she no longer knew which way was up or down. It was that precise moment when the door to the office burst open, and Dr. Letitia Hellion stood on the threshold and fixed her piercing eyes upon Piper’s white, trembling face.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LETITIA HELLION was gently panting from her sprint out of the testing lab, Piper was on the verge of hyperventilating, and Conrad subtly slumped his shoulders and allowed his facial features to return to their normal look of sullen complaint. For an agonizing three seconds, there was silence.
At the precise moment that Piper was sure her chest might break open, or that she’d burst into tears or faint, or some combination of all three, Conrad threw himself upon the awkward quiet. “It’s Piper! She’s hiding something,” he blurted, roughly shoving Piper forward at Dr. Hellion.
Piper’s mouth flew open. What happened to the Conrad she had just been speaking to? He had become an entirely different person.
“Is that true, Piper?” Dr. Hellion was amazingly calm, her eyes gentle and kind. “Are you hiding something?”
“Tell her.” Conrad sulked.
Piper looked at Conrad in mute dismay. What was she supposed to say?
“What is it, Piper? You can tell me.”
“Bella stole something and Piper saw it,” Conrad tattled.
“What?” No kidding, now Piper was utterly lost.
“I saw everything and if you don’t tell I will.” Conrad turned to Dr. Hellion. “Bella had this little, black bug in her hand when she was leaving. It looked like a cricket and she showed it to Piper when no one else was looking.” Conrad smugly turned to Piper as though he’d just put one up on her.