Chapter XXIX
THE EXPERIMENT ROOMS
Leading the way into the dark, Viktor banged into tables: Glass cylinders broke; metal trays clattered. Something slimy whipped him in the face as he ran, leaving odd-smelling chemicals dripping down his arm. What hung from the ceiling he didn't want to know, but in his mind's eye, he saw tentacles and slime and the skin of reptiles.
Evenova cried out from somewhere behind him. She must've felt it, too.
"You're fine, keep going," called Romulus' voice.
Charlotta found Viktor's hand and gripped it. "What is this place?"
"I don't know! Look for an exit!"
"There! A crack in a door," she said.
Viktor saw the sliver of light and swung open the door, leading them into another room, this one empty, narrow, and in glowing candlelight. On walls flashed past gruesome paintings. Many showed bloodshed or ghastly experiments; some depicted ancient thinkers in robes, huddling over gears and tools and wicked-looking apparatuses.
Romulus pulled up at the end of the gallery, where three more doors stood. "Footsteps—they're coming."
"But from which way?" hissed Viktor.
Evenova leaned an ear against the rightmost door. "They're coming this way!"
Charlotta cracked open the center passage. "And this!"
"Put your masks on!" said Viktor, throwing on his black hood. Romulus followed suit. No sooner had Evenova and Charlotta donned their stolen Masqueraider masks than guards burst into the room. Romulus ripped open the leftmost door to reveal a long descending staircase. The girls raced after him, Viktor hot on their heels.
"TO THE LIBRARY!" roared a guard as more doors banged open. "TO THE LIBRARY!"
A library, indeed: The serfs sprinted through archways into a grand hall filled with towering shelves of never-ending books—far too many to read in a lifetime, all ancient and worn. Down one of the many aisles they ran, but at its end, dark robes appeared in candlelight.
"Masqueraiders!" Viktor shouted. With a split in the aisle and no time to think, he pulled Charlotta right; Evenova and Romulus veered left.
Suddenly they were all mice in a maze. Viktor and Charlotta twisted and turned through the aisles while bullets flew, ripping apart the texts that flanked them.
"Not the Leopard's books, fools!" squawked an old man's voice.
Inspired, Viktor lit an Orange Split and tossed it backward. An entire shelf exploded into confetti. Their foes screamed with fury, yet held their bullets. Viktor threw another bomb, trying to keep them at bay. Charlotta grabbed his arm and pulled him toward a double-door exit. They crashed into a hallway, colliding with more enemies.
"Stop, it's us!" cried Evenova in her Masqueraider mask.
"Where have you been?" cried Charlotta.
Romulus tapped a book hidden under his shirt. "Broke into a locked room in the library for some extra reading."
"Later—there's an army behind us!" Viktor growled.
Down another hall they went, throwing everything they had, from Pepper Poppers to Bur Bombs, even Beehives. The guards' numbers dwindled from the painful assaults on their eyes and skin. Romulus saved but a few weapons for later.
The serfs turned a blind corner and darted through the nearest door, sprawling into a grand ballroom. Medieval coats of armor lined the walls as decoration. Giant black drapes hung from the ceiling.
Evenova spun around like a lost child. "There's no exit!"
"Yes, there is. I remember it on the map." Viktor led the way, sliding behind the black drapes. Sure enough, there was a hidden black door.
Romulus began to pick the lock as the sharp footsteps issued into the ballroom. Just as one guard moved toward the curtains, the lock clicked open, and the quartet slipped inside. Seeing the door unmoved, the guard rejoined the rest of the force.
The serfs descended yet another staircase into a drastic change of scenery: A tunnel greeted them, one large enough to stand up in and lit in intervals by lanterns hanging from chains chiseled into the tunnel walls formed of dark rock that was strangely slick.
"Well, this I definitely don't like," whispered Charlotta.
Romulus sniffed. "I'm afraid we haven't seen the worst Staryi has to offer."
"It is me or is it unnaturally hot in here?" asked Evenova, pulling off her mask. The group agreed, pocketing their disguises to try to cool off.
"Maybe that's what the Leopard is using his coal for—to heat the castle ... or maybe it's his creation that gives off heat," Viktor mused. "Romulus, what if this leads to the Leopard's cave?"
Romulus pushed back his sweaty blond hair. "I don't know. Hopefully it's an escape route instead. But ... either way, we have to go on."
At a brisk pace, they set off, the passage bending left and right lazily. The tunnel seemed vacant, but sometimes Romulus swore he could hear something moving. Often he stopped and listened hard, making the girls nervous. Just when Viktor felt like Romulus was losing it, the sound came again, this time louder and impossible to ignore: A rushing sound, like wind whipping through grass or a great creature swooping at a great speed; it was nowhere to be seen, yet everywhere around them, echoed by the tunnel.
"Run!" commanded Viktor, hoping his legs would obey his voice.
They broke into an all-out sprint. Lanterns fluttered by like fireflies. The sound gained on them, building to a roar, so they pushed harder. At a breaking point, the heat seemed to lessen, and the rustling of the terrible force faded away. The tunnel rose, and the serfs downgraded to a run, a jog, and then came to a dead halt at the base of a rising staircase.
"What was that?" Viktor gasped.
Romulus hunched over. "Something powerful."
Evenova pulled her brown curls to the side of her neck, as if she might be sick. "It was like wind."
"Or wings," added Charlotta.
Viktor staggered up the stairs, thoroughly dismayed to find a black door identical to the one on the eastern side of the tunnel. "How big can this castle be?"
"We're about to find out." Romulus unlocked the door and let it swing open.
Suddenly fear and shock were replaced by wonder and awe. The noise of the tunnel was forgotten as this new sight was beheld.
"It's so ... so ... beautiful," Evenova said.
Charlotta nodded, her purple eyes glittering in the reflecting light. The wide room held the objects all serf girls fancied but could never have: Stones—every color, shape, and size. Some sparkled in their cut and polished form, while others were left raw, coarse, and pure. They sat on ancient pedestals or were part of larger rocks incorporated into the walls made from quartz bricks, gray with shimmering crystal flecks. All around, candles glowed under green bell-shaped lanterns, casting a weird light on the surroundings.
The group slowly split apart, wandering through the cavernous room. Charlotta leaned over jagged black rocks that formed what appeared to be a rock tide pool. Undisturbed water rested like glass over the multicolored crystals that grew under the surface. Meanwhile, Romulus examined a giant crystal-lined geode, and Viktor strode between sleek rock tables holding scales, jars, and bits of rock and metal. A realization made his stomach lurch: This was all part of the Leopard's experiments.
"I've seen enough," Viktor said.
Evenova turned. "We only just—"
"Do you want to live or die?" Viktor snapped. "We already have what we came for."
The quartet complied and cracked open a door that led into a foyer. Two guards were patrolling the area, but their backs were to the serfs. All was quiet.
"Everyone must think we're still on the eastern side," whispered Romulus.
"Let's press the advantage," Viktor replied.
The serfs snuck across the way and turned a few corners. A single door faced them on a far wall—a door unlike any other: It was reinforced with steel bars and had three large padlocks.
BOOM. BOOM.
Romulus swiveled. "Is someone coming?"
BOOM. BOOM.
"It's not
footsteps. It's too much of a rhythm," said Evenova.
BOOM. BOOM.
Charlotta motioned. "It's coming from the door."
As if on a death march, Viktor and the others put one foot in front of the other, edging closer. The sound built like a war drum, like the living pulse of Staryi Castle, the heartbeat of the Leopard's creation!
BOOM! BOOM!
A foot from the door, the youths heard the added creaking of giant gears, chains, and pulleys. Then, just as loud, shrieks of pain echoed inside the rooms, as if something had gone terribly wrong. Indigo clouds of smoke billowed from the cracks in the door. The serfs turned tail, twisting and turning down passages until suddenly they stopped.
A new corridor faced them, this one darker than all the rest and dead silent. There were no candles here; even the white walls looked black. The black doors on either side were so shaded that they appeared to be nothing but archways into oblivion.
"I think this is Dukker's hallway—the one with the Jungle Room," Romulus whispered.
"The what room?" Evenova hissed.
Viktor shot Romulus a warning glance. "A room I don't think we should go in."
"True," growled a deep voice behind them.
Ten meters behind them, Captain Ulfrik was nearly invisible in his Masqueraider cloak and black-beaked mask. Viktor jolted sideways, seizing the handle of a random door. The girls looked from him to the Masqueraider, who hadn't moved a muscle. Everyone was frozen in place.
"Go ahead—open it. I dare you."
Is it a trap? Or is he bluffing? Viktor's palm was sweaty against the iron handle. He glanced at Romulus for guidance and saw a slight, indiscernible nod.
Viktor jerked the door open. He was prepared to usher the girl to safety, fight Ulfrik, or even enter the Jungle Room, but what he wasn't prepared for was the incredible power that emitted from the room, overriding his sense, barring his mind from thought!
One breath knocked Viktor to his knees. The foul, rotten force surged into his airways, attacking his brain, constricting his lungs, holding him prisoner. His head bent under the pressure of supersonic noise, like ten thousand whispers pouring into his ears, the sound of death itself. He could neither think nor move. Images of rotting flesh and the slithering dark things of the world held him in place. But there on the edge of doom, Charlotta's arms wrapped around him and dragged him backward. The door slammed shut.
Viktor's eyes snapped open. His mind was clear again; the Death Room was closed. In cold sweat, he scrambled to his feet as Romulus was thrown into a wall. Ulfrik kicked Charlotta out of the way and swatted Viktor sideways. The Masqueraider proceeded toward Evenova, but as he drew his sword, Romulus crept up and kicked him in the spine. Evenova used the opening to smash his mask with her baton. Blinded by pain, Ulfrik bellowed.
"Run!" Romulus dashed down the dim corridor.
"Which door?" Evenova shrieked.
"None—they're all traps!" barked Viktor.
They had almost reached the bend in the hall, but suddenly a door in front of them burst open, releasing a cloud of steam. Charlotta got clipped and went sprawling, pulling Evenova down with her. The blood brothers were forced against the open door, a knife at each of their throats. Viktor thought nothing could shock him more than the Death Room, but then he saw the face of his attacker.
Growing up, Viktor had heard all the stories about the Leshy, the Lord of the Forest: The spirit with green hair and beard and cloak—all pollen drenched and tangled with leaves. Yet now here Viktor was, years later, held at knifepoint in a strange castle by the man from legend. Was it possible? Was this the Leshy?
"Kill them!" Ulfrik shouted.
Both boys and the man glanced down the hall. Blood leaked out of Ulfrik's mask as he struggled to his feet.
"Do it! Slit their throats!"
The green-haired man pressed the knives tighter against their throats. His muscles tightened, preparing for the double slicing motions. Then something unexplainable happened: His stare finally met the boys', and as he looked back and forth between their faces, his green eyes grew wide with fear.
"What are you doing? Kill them!" Ulfrik cried.
But the Lord of the Forest was far from the room, buried deep in the thoughts of the past, it seemed. His knives clattered against the stone floor. He backed away from the blood brothers, holding the sides of his head like a madman in the middle of a breakdown. Ulfrik roared in fury.
Evenova and Charlotta sprang up and pushed Viktor and Romulus into the steamy chamber the green-haired man had emerged from. In that split second, their world transformed. Underfoot, stone turned to rich soil. The air morphed into wet, hot mist. The ceiling shot up into a vast tree canopy. The back wall was overgrown with vines. Where the other walls stood was beyond them. In the midst of the lush foliage, it was impossible to see how far the Jungle Room stretched. Yet the pounding of boots and screaming of orders told them they had no choice but to go on.
Romulus, the fastest and most knowledgeable of the wilderness, took the lead, but these plants were alien to him. Just a few meters in, he dashed through a bed of ferns with thick thorns that sliced at their legs. The girls' Masqueraider robes snagged so badly they had to abandon them and carry on in their shabby dresses. Next, Romulus slipped on a fungus-covered log and landed on his back in a patch of poisonous-looking flowers. Viktor and the girls veered right, squeezing through red-leaved bushes that towered over their heads. Yet ensnaring roots tripped them up next to Romulus.
As Romulus sat up next to a glowing lamp, a frog landed on the sleeve of his muddied fur coat. Everyone paused. Viktor remembered Zindelo's words: "Frogs you can see through. That's what I saw." Indeed, this frog was translucent. Through its lime-green skin, white organs and blue eggs were visible.
Then Ulfrik was back, cutting through bamboo with a horde of guards. Romulus and the girls took off, but Viktor was too slow in rising. Ulfrik snatched his foot. Viktor clawed into the soil, throwing a handful of dirt at his mask. Spitting blood and soil, the man snatched a dagger out of his cloak.
Viktor rolled away from the first swipe into a plant with heart-shaped leaves as big as his chest. Ulfrik hacked at the greenery, trying to reach his target. Viktor dove behind a short palm tree with spikes covering every inch of the trunk. Again, the dagger swung, but the spikes blocked Ulfrik's hand, ripping off bits of his flesh.
Viktor scampered up and found his back pressed against mossy bark. He barely ducked the dagger Ulfrik buried in the tree trunk. Unfazed, Ulfrik abandoned the weapon for his longer sword. Yet Viktor tugged the dagger out the trunk and blocked the blow of the larger blade.
Ulfrik laughed throatily. Knowing his unmatchable strength, he pushed the blade harder and harder on the dagger. Viktor trembled as the weapon touched his cheek. A second more and Ulfrik would have cut his face to the bone, but a strange sight distracted the man: Out of the hole where the dagger had pierced the tree spilt white sap, as if it were no more than milk stored in a hollow trunk.
Viktor ducked and darted into the stifling mist, where it was too dense for Ulfrik to follow. While searching for his friends, he debated how the Leopard could've brought any of this into creation. It wasn't just that he had kept a jungle alive inside of a castle in the middle of frigid Russia—it was the magic of the plants themselves. Tree trunks grew as straight and slim as poles, or looped in horizontal twists. Ferns and bushes had massive leaves or were slim and curled, or were purple with blue veins. Viktor swore some leaves even shrunk away from his touch as he ran past.
Gunshots sounded. Viktor swerved toward them. The flora finally began to thin, and then it opened entirely into what must have been the center of the Jungle Room: Four dirt paths met around a massive pond a hundred feet in diameter. With its gigantic lily pads and jumping fish, shimmering lanterns and magnificent reeds, the pond would have been a picture of ultimate beauty—had there not been bullets shredding through the plants and Masqueraiders running atop its stone sides.
"Don't di
sturb the waters!" a guard commanded. "Kill with the sword!"
Suddenly Viktor spotted Romulus and the girls on the far side of the pond with a handful of guards on their tail.
"This way!" Viktor shouted, waving them on.
He made down the left path, which turned from dirt to stone. Nestled among bamboo shoots, great glass aquariums slid past on both sides. In one with leafy plants, Viktor saw an array of neon fish. In another, the water rippled against some black ghost—the shadow fish Zindelo had once spoken of. Stranger still was the next tank; in the lamplight, a blue skull hovered in the water.
"Let's get to that exit!" shouted Viktor, pointing ahead to a goliath archway.
"Viktor, stop!" Evenova caught his arm. "It's Romulus—help him!"
Twenty yards behind them, Romulus was pressed against a murky aquarium, dodging the club of a fox-masked Masqueraider. Viktor reached into his bag: It was empty—all his weapons were spent! And his dagger was useless, for Romulus was on the ground, far away, his head about to be smashed by a giant club!
Evenova screamed—an earsplitting cry. Then, as if an answer to her cry, the ground shook, like a giant beast was stamping its feet. Yet the serfs were not the only ones disturbed: In the tank, the mud began to stir, awakening the creature inside. A fish, long and gray of the eeriest form, snaked upward through the water.
Oblivious, the Masqueraider held the side of the tank for support, his fingers dipped into the surface. Yet as he swung his club at Romulus' face, his entire body suddenly went rigid, like a lightning bolt had struck him. Then the invisible grip released its hold on him, and his body slumped to the ground.
Romulus slid his hand under the fox mask, searching for a pulse. "He's dead!"
Viktor stared back and forth from the snakelike fish to the dead man. "Fish that can kill their prey without touching them," whispered Zindelo's voice in his head.
"There they are—the murderers!" screeched a wolf Masqueraider running from the greater pond. A host of foes were beside him.
Shielding his head from bullets, Romulus sprinted toward the rest of the group.
Viktor just made out foreign words carved over the stone archway as they passed under it: Zoological Hortus.
A cloud of steam brought them into yet another world. This one was equally warm and hazy, but it smelled more like a stable than a garden, for here iron bars gleamed in the candlelight, forming cages of all sizes, some as big as rooms. Inside the cages were trees, bushes, pools of water, and creatures who had awoken from the commotion.
"It's the Leopard's beasts," panted Romulus as they split off to the right.
Viktor knew Romulus was right, because in a cage with iron bars twice as thick as the others, he glimpsed a colossal shadow that gleamed like black armor: The creature that had made the floor shake.
Another archway swooshed past: Domus Reptiliorum. Flashing past them now were cages with thin bars and leafy trees. Evenova shrieked as a green snake flicked its tongue toward her. In another, a humongous olive snake with black splotches lay curled on the ground. Charlotta seized Viktor's arm so hard she drew blood.
"This way!" Romulus wove down a path to the left and flinched as a gray tree passed: Curled around one of the branches was a brownish-orange snake whose scales had an iridescent sheen, like a rainbow had wrapped around its length. "Did you see that?" he cried out.
"Inward!" roared a Masqueraider. "They're heading to the insects!"
Viktor didn't know whether he was more frightened by animal-masked men at their back or the caged animals on their sides. A monstrous lizard engulfing a dead deer told him it was the latter. He also came to realize that like the pond in the Jungle Room, this next archway, Arthropoda Centrum, was the center of the Zoo Room. The space was the center of a five-spoke wheel, and in between its five archways, foreign scorpions, spiders, and centipedes sat in stacked glass cages.
Perhaps it was anger built up over a lifetime, or maybe it was the simple desire to break something the Leopard cared about, but either way, Charlotta pulled out her baton and smashed open sheets of glass before they sprinted through another archway: Feles Phantasmes.
In the hub, Masqueraiders and guards howled as they slipped over the broken glass. Many bled on the floor, screaming as poisonous centipedes scuttled over them. The foes unhurt doubled their speed, fearing the Leopard's wrath.
Fear also drove the youths. These new cages were built as strong as the beasts inside them. Orange, black, and white, packed with muscle, claws, and fangs like daggers, the Siberian tiger was a creature Viktor only knew from stories; then a blue-eyed, black-spotted snow leopard roared with such force that he leapt sideways. His shoulder thumped the bars of the cage opposite, and pain cleaved through his skin like a hot knife.
Viktor twisted to see a black-and-gold Amur leopard standing on its hind legs. One forepaw had his coat and skin snagged; the other swung through the bars at his head. He narrowly ducked. The beast yanked him closer, aiming to bite a chunk out of his jaw, when Viktor suddenly remembered his white-knuckle grip on Ulfrik's dagger. He slashed the great black nose. A growl split the air in two. By the time Viktor fell backward as a free man, Romulus was there, pulling him forward to join the sprinting girls.
"I ... I fought off a leopard!"
"Yeah, but the wrong one," huffed Romulus.
Before they sped through the final archway reading Canes Domesticatis, Viktor glimpsed the strangest creature of all. Like an experiment gone wrong, it clung on a tree branch like a cross between leopard and boa. Its legs were too short; its tail, too long; and its skin, covered in black splotches resembling great snake scales.
Now dogs and wolves leapt up in cages flashing past. Viktor stole a glance back: Captain Ulfrik in his beaked mask swung one of the doors open; his dog, Major Canis, stampeded over the Masqueraiders, tearing after the serfs who had exited into a grand foyer.
Romulus never had a chance. He tried to dodge the mass of fur and muscle, but Major Canis was too fast. For the second time that year, the dog slammed him to the ground with the force of a charging bull. Running past Evenova and Charlotta was enough to bowl them over. Then the animal turned on Viktor, snarling with his teeth barred.
Viktor felt déjà vu sweep over him: He was back in the forest, staring down a black bear with nothing but a borrowed knife. This time, Romulus couldn't save him.
Ulfrik pulled up, watching. "What of your last words?"
Viktor pointed the dagger at the dog. "By your own blade."
"Wrong answer." The captain spoke a command in Fenya.
The Caucasian mountain dog launched toward Viktor, yet out of the blue, he heard the words spoken at the hanging he'd witnessed years ago. "Wicked dogs, those. They'll never stop a charge once they start."
Viktor knew what he had to do. He stood still in the face of onrushing death until the very last moment. When the dog was mere feet away, he sprang out like fencer, his knife arm extended to full length. Major Canis didn't shy from contact, but rather sprang to meet the dagger, which buried itself in his throat, all the way into his brain. The pile of fur collapsed.
Several unlucky Masqueraiders rushed into the room at that moment; Ulfrik roared and ran them through with his sword. "Don't touch the serfs! They're my kills now!"
Adrenaline pumping, Viktor ripped the dagger out of the dog's head and ran for an exit with his rallying friends. Back in another corridor, and with guards converging on their position, they had no option but to take a spiral staircase heading up one of the western towers, heading to an inevitable dead end.
"This is the wrong way!" Evenova moaned.
"She's right," cried Charlotta.
But there was nothing the blood brothers could do. The stairs rose and rose, with neither landing pads nor exit doors. There was no escape.
I wish we'd never come here! Viktor thought. I wish I'd never witnessed that hanging or the House of Cards or the Silent Deal. I wish I could take it all back.
So trapped was Viktor in
his wretched thoughts, he barely remembered sprinting up eight floors, or reaching an end door that led into the Planetarium Room with telescopes and moonstone stars and a giant contraption of the solar system hanging from the ceiling on gears. He didn't even remember ascending one last spiral staircase and being boosted up into a hatch. All he knew was that he was suddenly standing on the top of the western tower with his three friends overlooking all of Aryk in the moonlit night.
Romulus pulled his length of Fire Wire from his pack and tied one end to the iron spike on top of the octagonal roof. He threw the bundle out, but the rope was far too short to reach the frozen river below. Its end dangled halfway down the white tower, fluttering in the night air.
"It doesn't reach! What do we do?" Charlotta asked, hugging Viktor's arm. He was too numb to console her.
Evenova peered at the opposite side of the slanted roof. "Look—another hatch. It might be an exit route!"
Yet they were doomed not to know, for the first hatch opened and Captain Ulfrik swung up onto the roof with his revolving pistol drawn. He kicked the latch closed with his foot and slid his iron sword through its handles, locking it in place. Below, guards banged at the unyielding hatch.
"No one comes up but the Leopard!" Ulfrik snarled. He tossed his broken mask to the roof tiles. Sporting a broken nose and a black-brown beard caked in dried blood, he looked more ferocious than ever.
"Don't come any closer," Romulus warned, pulling out the Silent Deal parchment and a match.
Ulfrik looked insulted. "Do you think the Leopard will care about a list of names after the damage you've caused? YOU ENDANGERED HIS LIFE'S WORK!"
"So why isn't he here?" Romulus said. "Tigers have roared. Bombs have gone off."
"Oh, you'd be surprised at what noise Staryi Castle can hide—like screams, and soon yours will be among them, facing pain past imagination!" Ulfrik looked to the tree line below. "Now let us summon the Leopard."
BANG!
The bullet tore through Romulus' shoulder. His mangled cry filled the night sky, echoing far into the forest beyond. As the girls bent over him in hysterics, Ulfrik took a cigar out of his cloak, lit it, and took a long puff.
"Now he has heard."