The Owl Keeper (10 page)

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with high ceilings and panels of dark wood, its painted floorboards littered with junk. He sidled in after her, bracing himself for a wolf attack.

Computers hummed, machines pulsated, dust seethed. Overhead, Max could hear rain drumming against the skylights. There was a strange energy here that he found unsettling. The room seemed at odds with the rest of the building, which was elegant and old-fashioned. These surroundings were more industrious, more
serious
than a quality chocolate factory.

To Max's relief there were no signs of wolves on the premises. Still, he wasn't taking any chances. He inched forward, looking this way and that, poised to run. But nothing jumped out.

He was certain his parents didn't work in this room. They held top-level positions, not drone jobs. The workers here spent their time flicking switches on machines and staring at numbers on computer screens.

All at once Rose went into high gear, moving through the room like a whirlwind, overturning waste bins, throwing open cupboards, rummaging through drawers, dumping file folders on the floor.

"What are you doing?" cried Max, startled by her frantic behavior. "Are you looking for something?"

Her muffled voice drifted out from under a desk. "I'll let you know when I find it."

Trying to keep calm, Max inspected the various charts and diagrams that were pinned to the walls with thumbtacks. They were written in codes and symbols that made no sense to him. Were they recipes? Train schedules? He didn't have a clue. Yet by the

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look of things, nothing in this room was remotely connected to the shipping or production of chocolate.

He edged slowly toward the other end of the room, surprised to see it had been converted into a greenhouse, crammed with flowers and plants and fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows. More puzzled than ever, Max tramped over for a closer look, noting a hose coiled on the wall and sprinklers in the ceiling.

Amid the chaos of vegetation, one plant springing out of a clay pot caught his eye: lush, velvety, with dark purple leaves.

"I don't believe it!" he gasped, staring at the deadly purple sphinx. It was identical to the one Rose had found by the owl tree.

"What did you find?" cried Rose, rushing over. "Deadly nightshade!" she breathed, leaning across his shoulder.

"Its cousin, you mean," Max corrected her. "Deadly purple sphinx." The sickly sweet scent caught in his throat and he started to cough.

"My dad suspected the government was smuggling poisonous plants into the country and growing them to use as biological weapons. This is proof, Max!"

"My mom and dad would never work in a poison factory," said Max, insulted.

What sort of place would be guarded by wolves, which were supposedly extinct? he wondered. Unless the sign on the door was a lie, a trick to keep people out. Plague wolves couldn't be real, he told himself, they were just an empty threat. He gave a sigh of relief.

"This room must be a side business," he said. "I bet they send all the drones and nerds here."

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Rose gave a cynical snort. "Just to clue you in, this is more than a chocolate factory. Max, there's something I should tell you. My father has a PhD in toxicology, so he knows all about poisons."

"Hold on," said Max. "You told me he had a PhD in undercover surveillance."

"That too. I told you he's an egghead." She threw Max a wide smile. "Anyway, when the High Echelon took over, they sent him to work in a factory like this where he carried out secret experiments."

Max gulped. "What kind of experiments?"

"Gene splicing, toxic germs, all sorts of gruesome stuff. Sorry I lied, Max," she added, eyebrows quirked. "I wasn't sure I could trust you--not at first, anyway."

Max didn't think Rose sounded sorry at all. And there was something in her expression that made him suspect she wasn't telling him everything.

"You mean your father isn't a secret agent for the High Echelon? He doesn't exterminate people?" Max suddenly felt small and idiotic. "You lied to me about your father going to spy school?"

Rose shook her head. "He doesn't work for the High Echelon, he's against it! The government never sent him to spy school! My dad works for the Tarian!"

"The Tarian? What's that?"

"They're a resistance group! My dad and I are on the run; the Tarian are hiding us in a barn on the other side of town." She focused her huge green eyes on Max. "My dad has night blindness, so I offered to come here and check things out."

Too furious to say a word, Max stood, hands in his pockets,

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scowling. Did Rose expect him to believe her father had let her go to Cavernstone Hall in the middle of the night and risk being captured by the Dark Brigade?

Unperturbed, she pointed to a row of glass jars. "See that purple-colored powder? Chances are that's ground-up deadly purple sphinx--in other words,
poison.
The government adds tiny amounts to the hot cocoa mix. That way nobody dies when they drink it, 'cause it's only a little bit."

"Why would they mess around with their bestselling hot chocolate?" sputtered Max, fed up with her nonsensical stories. "Why would the High Echelon want to poison everyone?"

"My dad says they make two kinds," she went on, ignoring his outburst. "The first is ordinary cocoa, but the second cocoa has trace amounts of poison. If you drink it day after day you become weak, your mind goes murky, you feel drowsy and blah. You get fevers and sore throats and your eyes are always itching."

Max shifted nervously from one foot to the other. Rose had just described every one of his symptoms. "Why would the High Echelon allow people to drink poison?" he asked, trying not to let his voice quaver. "Tell me that, huh?"

"It's all about the big picture, Max, don't you see? Mind control!" She slipped a bottle of powdered deadly purple sphinx into her coat pocket. "It's one more way the High Echelon is trying to take control of our thoughts."

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

[Image: Cocoa.]

The next door Rose selected was painted high-gloss red and embossed with a pattern of yellow suns. By now Max was getting a little tired of seeing the High Echelons logo everywhere. She stood scrutinizing it, tapping the smart card against her front teeth, as if contemplating what might be on the other side. Unlike the first door, there were no warning signs or pictures of wolves.

Even so, Max was a nervous wreck. He kept thinking about what Rose had said about mind control. It worried him, the way his memories kept disappearing, as if a giant eraser were rubbing them out. Was he somehow a victim of mind control?

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Sliding the card, Rose entered first. Max followed, anxiously gnawing his fingernails. The room was long and narrow, a laboratory that reeked of strong chemicals and cleaning fluids. Max wrinkled his nose and sneezed.

Heaped up on long benches were glass beakers and flasks, and multiknobbed microscopes that looked, to Max, extremely complicated. Machines buzzed at the edges of the room and the glassware vibrated. He inched down the aisle, running his hand over glass and metal objects, feeling queasier by the minute.

Something about this room felt wrong. Max's heart thumped against his chest. He sensed something here that didn't belong, something unhealthy.
Diseased.

"Can we go home now?" he called to Rose.

Rose didn't answer. She was zipping around in full-throttle mode, inspecting everything she could get her hands on. She dismissed a Bunsen burner with a wave of the hand. A collector's item. Totally useless.

"This thing's vintage," she muttered, peering into a microscope with dozens of dials and knobs.

Max wandered over to a workbench, trying to imagine his mom and dad working here. Somehow the image wouldn't compute. Along the bench delicate instruments were arranged in tidy rows; he stared at them with wonder and suspicion. Small and sharp and shiny, they looked like tools that elves might use. Lined up next to them were spools of thick brown thread and sewing needles stuck into pincushions. Was this some kind of repair shop?

A kind of fizziness started up behind his eyes, which he recognized as the start of a headache. He found the tiny suns on the

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pincushions somehow repugnant. What in the world were all those things for?

"Surgical instruments," Rose said matter-of-factly, reaching past him to touch what looked like a miniature bed. It was upholstered in red vinyl with small yellow straps attached to the sides. "Look at this tiny operating table! My dad said there were secret experiments going on!"

Feeling squeamish, Max turned away. He didn't want to imagine what type of animal would fit onto that operating table. A small dog? A raven? An
owl?

From behind him came a gurgling noise and he felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck. Turning, he saw a maze of thin glass tubes branching out in all directions. Inside the tubes bubbled a thick frothy liquid, dark purple in color, with flecks of red glitter. He breathed in a harsh, metallic smell. Something lurched in the pit of his stomach.

There was no mistaking what was in the tubes: it was the medicine Dr. Tredegar injected Max with every week. He had no idea what it was called--the doctor always brushed off his questions with a joke--yet he knew beyond any doubt that this was it.

"Ugh! What's that goopy-looking stuff?" asked Rose, flitting over. "It looks vile! Must be for one of their genetic experiments."

"It's medicine," said Max. One thing he knew for sure was that Dr. Tredegar would never dream of giving kids poison shots. "I get injections for my condition and this is what they give me."

Rose's eyebrows shot up, but she didn't say a word.

They hurried down the red-carpeted staircase to the first floor, where Max noted with satisfaction that everything looked

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completely normal. He mentally checked off the offices, the mail room, coat hooks, mirrors, an umbrella stand, a punch clock. Even the employee bulletin board looked drab and ordinary.

They followed the burnt chocolate smell to a door at the end of the hall. Ignoring the sign marked authorized personnel only, Rose pushed open the door and strode inside.

Max followed her into a vast kitchen of marble counters, gleaming sinks and sparkling chrome fixtures. The windows were covered with louvered shutters painted in creamy reds and yellows. A kitchen like this, he thought, might be featured on the cover of his mother's
Homes and Domes
magazine.

Rose skidded across the tile floor and disappeared through an archway. Wandering around, Max felt relieved to see how old-fashioned everything looked. Pots and pans hung from suspended steel racks, the floor was waxed to a high gloss, a refrigerator rumbled in the corner. He clambered onto the counter and opened a cupboard. Inside he found dozens of familiar yellow boxes.

Rose skidded back in. "There's a pantry in there, stuffed to the gills with hot cocoa."

"See, Rose, the real thing." Max held up a box. "I call this lady on the box Wavy Gray." He tapped the illustration. "I bet my mom and dad take all their breaks here and fix themselves hot cocoa."

"You better hope not. That box is yellow."

"So what?"

"Food shops sell red boxes--that's the ordinary cocoa," she said. "The yellow ones are laced with poison."

Max teetered at the edge of the countertop. "That's not funny, Rose." Feeling a bit unsteady, he sat down and slid onto the floor.

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"My dad's a pharmacologist, he should know." Rose tugged open the refrigerator door. "That cocoa makes you feel woozy, right? And you can't remember things sometimes?"

"It's a bedtime drink, it's supposed to make you sleepy." Tired of arguing, Max suddenly felt ravenous. "Do you see anything to eat?"

He peered over Rose's shoulder. The refrigerator shelves were empty, except for one. On the middle shelf thin corked bottles, filled with a viscous liquid, were organized in tidy rows.

Rose picked up a bottle and inspected it. "Definitely not drinkable." She gave it a shake.

Max watched as tiny yellow bubbles floated up to the surface, corkscrewing up and down, each with a black dot at the center. Mystified, he leaned closer--and his stomach caved in.

They weren't bubbles. They were eyes. Panic shot through him, like an electric jolt.

"Rose?" he whispered.

He saw her swallow, unable to look away from the floating eyes. "I'm out of here," she rasped, thrusting the bottle back onto the shelf.

She slammed the refrigerator door. Without warning, lights flashed overhead. A siren began to wail.

Max's heart fell to his knees.

"Run!" cried Rose, sprinting across the room.

Clamping his hands over his ears, Max took off. Sirens blared and lights flashed as he raced down the hall. He hated the way loud noises always clanged and echoed inside his head.

Rose screeched to a halt. "A guard!"

Through the sun-shaped window, Max saw a blurred figure. His heart racketed against his ribs.