But I was no closer to knowing exactly where Dr. Joseph Levitch’s secret laboratory was.
One Indian summer afternoon, I had my chance. I came home from my afternoon classes and found Preston and Kozmik Kat sitting on the living room couch, babysitting Simon. I was late, as usual, and Preston, checking his pager, was eager to pass off Simon to me.
He made a quick call using the hallway phone. “She’s here now,” I overheard him say. “I can be right over in a few minutes, Dr. Levitch.” He hung up the phone and rejoined me and Koz with Simon in the living room.
“You’ve got everything you need, right?” he asked me impatiently.
“Sure, no problem,” I said. “Where are you off to?”
“I’m, uh, meeting somebody,” he said, “then I’m going home.” He left without saying goodbye.
I watched Preston step off the front porch and walk down the sidewalk. “Keep an eye on Simon,” I said to Koz and dashed up to my bedroom. From the back of the closet I fetched the garment bag containing my costume. I removed the red cape and brass buttons and spread it on my bed. I expected my cape to spring to life automatically. “Oh, I forgot,” I said to myself. “Where did I put my visor?” I rummaged through the closet.
I pulled out a shoebox where I kept my orange visor and took it out. “Which buttons? How many taps?” I said to myself as I fumbled with it in my hands. “One? Two?” I tapped the temples the requisite number of times: twice. The cape fluttered to life, levitating over the bed.
I opened the window. I forgot that we had yet to remove the screens for fall. “Drat!” I said.
I threw the visor on the bed and took the screen out of the window, which took a few seconds. Once I got it loose, it fell outside, onto the porch roof below.
I turned to the cape. “Cape!” I ordered. “Tail Preston Percy—find out where he’s going—find the location of Dr. Levitch’s secret Megatonic University laboratory and report back to me.”
The cape just fluttered above my bed but didn’t move from its position.
I grabbed it and shoved it out of the window. Now it hovered over the porch roof. Leaning out, I pointed to Preston who was now almost a block away down Ann Street. “Preston Percy,” I repeated. “Follow him!”
The cape’s buttons made a nodding gesture and darted off down the street. I climbed out of the window onto the porch roof to retrieve the fallen screen. I edged the screen back in through the bedroom window and ducked in again myself. Inside my bedroom again, I leaned out and stole a quick look down Ann Street to make sure the cape was following Preston—it was following him about a house behind—replaced the screen, and closed the window.
I zipped up the garment bag with the rest of my costume and hung it back in the closet. Then I raced downstairs to check on Simon—I always imagine hearing him cry from the next room whenever I leave him alone for more than a minute. But he was only dawdling playfully in his crib while Koz perused The Detroit Day.
“Bradford’s got another column on vampires,” he said. “What are you up to? Trying out your new hardware?”
I explained that I had ordered my cape to put a tail on Preston Percy and see where he was going, in the hopes of ascertaining the whereabouts of the secret Megatonic University lab.
“Good idea,” said Koz. “Where’s your visor?”
“Shoot!” I forgot that I could monitor the cape’s progress through the visor. I ran back upstairs to my bedroom and grabbed the visor off the bed. Then I ran back downstairs again. “Oowee!” I said, out of breath.
“Now put it on,” said Koz. “I’ll bet you can see everything your button cameras see—in stereo.”
I put the visor on and tapped the temple. It showed me exactly what the camera lenses in the buttons of my cape saw: a live video image of the back of Preston Percy’s head as he walked west along Ann Street. “You’re right,” I said. “He has a slight bald starting in the back of his scalp.”
I nearly fell over the coffee table trying to move around the living room while watching the video, so I took it off the visor and set it on the coffee table. I figured it would be several minutes at least before Preston walked across campus to the secret laboratory of Dr. Levitch.
“Do you guys want something to eat?” I asked. “I’m hungry.”
“I’ll have my usual—a saucer of milk,” said Koz. “With a side of cream. The kid’ll have canned worms, of course—Chef Oh-Boy-and-How.”
I went to the kitchen to fix myself a sandwich and Simon and Koz their respective snacks. As I pulled stuff out of the fridge, there was a knock at the front door. “Who can that be?” I wondered.
When I got to the door, Koz had already opened it.
Preston Percy stood on the porch, calmly smoking a cigarette. “Did you lose this?” he said, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder. The red cape was fluttering under the eave of the porch right behind him.
“M-my cape,” I said, in mock astonishment. “How did that thing get out?” I opened the screen door and called the cape inside. “Shame on you, cape! Bad cape.”
“I’m late,” Preston muttered, and strode off.
“Don’t worry,” I called after him. “It won’t happen again.”
I closed the door and scolded the cape. “Can’t you be more inconspicuous?” I said.
“You realize you’re talking to a bright red cape with shiny brass buttons,” said Koz. “How can you expect it to be inconspicuous in broad daylight?”
“You realize you’re a talking cat giving me a lecture,” I said. “So we’re even. What am I supposed to do—wait until nightfall?”
“Obviously, I’m going to have to put a tail on Preston Percy myself,” said Koz.
“And exactly how are you going to do that?” I asked. “You’ll be just as conspicuous—you’ve got your own bright red cape and shiny brass buttons, along with cyclopean goggles, and the lab could be clear across campus. How will you avoid being spotted?”
Koz removed his goggles along with his own red cape and buttons. “I’ll go commando,” he said. “I’ll stick low to the ground, weave in and out of bushes, hop back fences, stuff like that. If you don’t hear from me by sundown, send out the rescue team.”
He slinked out past the screen door on all fours—very cat-like—and followed Preston west along Ann Street.
Ninety minutes later, both Trent and Stella were home fixing their supper in the kitchen. I heard Koz return through the front door. I came downstairs and found him in the living room putting his goggles, cape, and buttons back on.
“How’d it go?” I whispered.
“I lost him,” said Koz.
“Figures,” I said. “You overconfident, cocky little—”
“Hey, I almost got run over by a university shuttle bus,” said Koz. “One of those big ones.”
“How far did you get?” I asked.
“It was several blocks from here,” said Koz. “He turned and went several more blocks.”
“North or south?”
“I dunno. Which way is Preston’s neighborhood?”
“North,” I said.
“Then the other way. We went south.” said Koz.
“Downtown,” I said. “Which street?”
“How should I know?”
“You could try reading the street signs,” I said. “Some expert detective you are.”
“It was the street with all the ritzy boutiques.”
“Great. That narrows it down—to the entire downtown business district.”
“It was the street with all those kiosks and bus stops along it,” said Koz. “Like I said, I nearly got run over by a bus.”
“Main Street,” I said. “Okay, now you’re talking. Did he go into one of the businesses?”
“He crossed the street on me,” said Koz. “I stayed on the other side, weaving in and out between pedestrians, dodging students who want to pick me up and pet me. But I managed to stay parallel with Preston as we went down the block. Then he passed behind one of those kiosks.”
“Where was the kiosk?”
“In front of some shoe store, I think,” said Koz. “I tried crossing the street, but I had to jump back to the curb because of an oncoming bus. When I finally got over to the other side, I went around the kiosk, but he wasn’t there.”
“Did he go inside the shoe store?”
“No,” said Koz. “He couldn’t have. They were already closed.”
“He might have had a key,” I said. “I’ll bet that shoe store in the entrance to Megatonic University.”
After dark, Koz and I walked over to Main Street. I had my backpack with my cape and visor in it, and Koz wore his usual goggles and cape. Many of the bars and restaurants were still open, but the other storefronts were all locked up, and there weren’t too many pedestrians since it was a school night. We located the shoe store. Not only was the front door locked, but one of those scissor-like folding gates was pulled across the big display windows and padlocked for security.
I peered inside the window. “I don’t see anybody inside,” I said. “If Preston went in this way, he’ll need to come back out the same way.”
“How can he do that with the gate padlocked from outside?” asked Koz.
“Good point,” I replied. “I wonder if there’s a back way…”
“Pssst,” Koz whispered. “Don’t look now, but there’s Preston a few doors up the street.”
I turned slightly to get a peek. Sure enough, Preston was half a block north, walking up Main Street, toward his own neighborhood.
“Where did he come out of?” I whispered to Koz. “Did you see which storefront?”
“No,” said Koz. “I just looked in that direction a moment before, and he wasn’t there. When I looked again, he was walking away from us.”
“Did he see us?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Koz. “He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry.”
We watched Preston stop at the end of the block and light a cigarette. He didn’t turn around or look back at us.
“Should we follow him?” asked Koz.
“There’s no use,” I said. “He’ll just be heading back to his place on Detroit Street—probably stopping off at The Flame for a nightcap along the way.” I walked slowly up the streets, peering into the storefronts adjacent to the shoe store. “The question is, which one of these did he come out of?”
Next to the shoe store was a kid’s clothing store and a jewelry store; next to that was a bank branch. But all of these storefronts were locked up, with security gates padlocked in front of them, just like the shoe store.
“Preston couldn’t have come out of any of these,” I concluded. I looked back down the street toward the shoe store. My eyes rested on the kiosk in front of the store. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked Koz.
“I have no idea what you’re thinking,” he replied.
I raced back to the kiosk. It was a cylindrical wooden structure covered with flyers announcing local bands and campus events. I knocked on the wood; it was hollow.
“Have you ever seen the movie The Third Man?” I asked.
“I would attend every arthouse film series on campus if I could,” said Koz. “But they tend to get suspicious when a talking cat orders buttered popcorn. Can you remind me exactly how that cinematic classic is relevant to this situation?”
“In the movie, Joseph Cotton is following Orson Welles through the streets of Vienna, until he loses him. So, Cotton returns with the British inspector, Trevor Howard, who doesn’t believe him, because Orson is supposed to be dead. But it turns out Orson slipped into a kiosk that was actually the opening to the sewers under Vienna.”
I felt along the kiosk; there was a panel on a hinge. It pulled open. Inside were steps leading underground.
“I think we just found the entrance to Dr. Levitch’s lab,” I said.
A spiral stairs descended under Ann Arbor’s Main Street into the darkness below. Koz followed along reluctantly. The cobwebs and cobblestones, along with the chilly temperatures, gave the underground passageway a gothic feeling, like we were entering a Piranesi etching. These catacomb-like tunnels felt like they had been in place since before the Arbor State University campus was built.
The buttons on Kozmik Kat’s cape lit up, illuminating the darkness. They came on so suddenly, I screamed.
“Shit!” I said. “What the hell—you scared the daylights out of me. Next time, warn me when you’re going to use your technology.”
Koz was just as surprised as I was. “I didn’t know they did that,” he said. “I usually don’t stumble around pitch-dark tunnels at night.”
I pulled my cape out of my backpack and put it on as well; the buttons also lit up. Our lights illuminated the dusty cobwebs overhead as we continued to descend the stairs. I estimated we were now at least a hundred and fifty feet underground.
Where the stairs stopped, tunnels branched off in multiple directions.
“Do you really think Dr. Joe’s laboratory is down here?” said Koz. “These tunnels look like they’re from the Victorian era.”
“Arbor State moved here from Detroit the same year Victoria became Queen of England—1837,” I noted. “So your description is apt. They could have built this network at the same time as the campus. The question is, have they updated Megatonic University since to build megaheroes?”
“At least it’s not the sewer system of Vienna,” said Koz. “Nice and dry.”
I looked around at all the tunnels. “Do you know which way is north?”
“After spiraling around so many times? No idea.”
I put on my visor. “This way runs parallel to Main Street.” I pointed out the main cross-axis. “But which way had Preston gone?”
“I think this way,” said Koz, pointing in the direction of the widest tunnel. “Less cobwebs and dust—like it’s been used recently.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “But I’d still like to explore all the possibilities.” I pulled the cape off of my shoulders and put on my visor. “Cape, map out as many of these tunnels as possible.” It nodded and fluttered off through the cobwebs in another direction.
Koz and I went several hundred feet along the tunnel we had chosen for ourselves, until we came to a thick iron door. Of course I couldn’t tell how thick it was from looking at it, but when I rapped it with my knuckles, it didn’t offer a hollow echo.
“Can you shove open the door?” asked Koz.
I tried. It wouldn’t budge.
“I can’t imagine them cooking up pharmaceuticals down here,” I said. “But I could imagine them cooking up megaheroes in a place like this—to keep it secret, and bomb-proof—from foreign powers. And to lock away their monstrous mistakes.”
Suddenly, the iron door groaned. From the other side, it was being opened. I took a step back.
When the door opened, a man in a lab coat stepped out of the darkness. He held a weapon in his hand—an electronic gizmo in the shape of a pistol.
“What are you doing here?” he snarled. “You are unauthorized personnel.”
The man appeared hunched over; he ambled closer, revealing one lame leg. He wore eyeglasses with round, thick, pop-bottle lenses. His teeth were uneven and his face unshaven. He might have been Dr. Levitch except he looked too young.
“Uncle Joe will want to speak with you,” he said.
The weapon in his hand flashed a blinding, violet light. Koz and I passed out.
When I woke up, Koz and I were strapped to a couple of adjustable oaken tables, tilted so that we were almost vertical, like in some Frankenstein movie. Around us was the same kind of lab—basically a dungeon with rusticated stone-vault ceilings, torches burning on the walls, and chemicals burbling away in beakers over burners, with tubes running everywhere—the whole nine yards.
“What a cliché,” said Koz. “This is more atmospheric than the Law Quad.”
An older man in a lab coat ambled up to us. “How are you, my dear?” said Dr. Joe.
“Uh, I feel kinda weak,” I replied.
“Grady may have overdone it,” he said. “You can’t get good lab assistants these days.”
“What are you doing here, Dr. Joe?” I asked.
“Synthesizing the antidote to that homemade Mega-Soldier Syrup, of course,” he replied. “We’re cooking up a batch to put into the water supply tonight.”
I looked around the lab. “So this is Megatonic University,” I said.
“I haven’t heard that name in quite a while,” said Dr. Levitch. “We just fired up this old lab because it was convenient. Rather than analyze Mervyn’s homemade mixture and manufacture the antidote in California, it seemed smarter just to fly back and to do it here. Not exactly state-of-the-art, but the other campus labs are all booked.”
The professor looked at my restraints: leather straps secured with a padlock.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said the doctor. “These were merely for your own protection. Let me get the key.” He turned and called out, “Grady!”
“Who’s Grady?” I asked.
“He’s my, uh…nephew…from another…” The doctor coughed and stammered. “It’s a long story.”
Dr. Levitch excused himself and shuffled off into the darkness, disappearing down a long corridor at the far end of the lab. “Grady!” he called.
I turned and looked at Koz, who was similarly restrained and slightly groggy as well. “Who do you suppose Grady is?”
“The guy that zapped us,” said Koz. “Aside from that, I don’t know or care. Can you bust out of these restraints?”
“My strength is coming back, but I’m still too weak,” I said.
“Me neither,” said Koz.
Just then, my cape fluttered into the lab.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
The cape hovered in front of me, its brass buttons eyeing my restraints. Suddenly, the buttons glowed red; they shot precise, intense laser beams on either side of my arms, cutting through the strap across my chest. Then they did the same to the strap around my thighs, ankles, and wrists, and for Koz’s restraints as well.
Now free, Koz and I rubbed our wrists. I wondered what to do next.
“Should we wait for the professor to return? That would be the polite thing to do.”
“Are you kidding?” said Koz. “And end up as green slime on the walls? Let’s break outta this place.”
We followed my cape as it sped out of the lab and along the maze of corridors back to the spiraling stairs —we might never have found our way otherwise—and clambered back up to State Street.
I know it was rude, but we never looked back. Nor did we say goodbye to kindly Dr. Joe.
Next: Dining Room Diagrams
First Chapter | All Chapters | Latest Chapter
Archival Images:
_______
All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2019, all rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment