A Game Called Chaos (11 page)

The Hardys looked around. At the end of the street, at the top of the hill, sat the old mansion. One light still shone from the topmost tower room.

“Come on,” Frank said. “That's got to be where Cross is holed up. And, with any luck, we'll find Royal there, too.” The two of them jogged off in that direction through the shadow-filled alley.

“You know, the mansion is probably filled with booby traps,” Joe said. “We really should have gotten a list from Chelsea of all the monsters and pitfalls that she remembers being in the new game.”

“I guess we'll just have to count on your experience with the first two games to see us through,” Frank said.

“Yeah, but that won't warn us of stuff like the exploding bats. That's from the fourth game—the one that's not out yet. What other stuff did Chelsea say was in A Town Called Chaos?”

Frank thought for a minute as they jogged. Ahead of them loomed a huge, shabby-looking warehouse.

“The bats, the driverless car, the ghost of Katherine Chaos's evil sister, a mansion full of traps, and . . .”

Suddenly the ground around them shook and the roof of the old warehouse exploded into a thousand splinters of wood. A huge shape rose up out of the wreckage, its humanlike torso two stories tall. The hairy monstrosity threw back its head and bellowed its rage to the twilight sky.

“A giant ape!” Frank cried.

“Duck!” yelled Joe.

The Hardys hit the pavement as a huge hairy fist whooshed over their heads, slamming into the side of a nearby building. The giant ape howled angrily.

“This can't be happening!” Joe said.

“Right now, I don't think we have time to argue with reality,” Frank said as he got to his feet.

The ape's other fist came smashing down. Joe rolled to one side, while Frank jumped to the other. The fist hit the ground between the brothers with a thunderous boom. The ape gazed down at the Hardys, its red eyes blazing like lasers.

As Frank and Joe turned and ran toward the mansion, a giant hand crashed down in front of
them, cutting them off. They turned and ran back the way they had come. The fist hit the side of another building, sending splinters of wood raining down on the brothers. The monster roared.

“This isn't working,” Joe yelled.

“I know,” Frank said. “But we have to keep moving or we'll be pancakes.” As he spoke, the fist crashed down in front of them once again.

“Let's split up,” Joe said. “It can't get us both at once.”

“Actually,” Frank said, “it's having trouble getting us at all. If you notice it just keeps doing the same things over and over.”

Frank dodged and Joe ducked as the fist went by again. “You're right!” Joe said. “It's not acting intelligently at all.” He looked at the ape's giant face. Its eyes flashed, its mouth opened and shut, it roared. “That's why it hasn't turned us into pulp yet. It's not as sophisticated as Cross's other mechanical creatures.”

“Probably she didn't have the money to construct something this big from scratch,” Frank said. “We're looking at Giganto, unless I miss my guess. Remember the amusement park on the way into town? But just because it was part of a thrill ride doesn't make it any less dangerous.”

“I think it homes in on our movements,” Joe said. “It's got some kind of a motion sensor. And
it hasn't moved out of that old warehouse to chase us.”

Frank nodded as they dodged the swinging fist once more. “I don't think it can,” he said. “I doubt it even has the lower part of its body. The power source must be in that warehouse. If you can keep it distracted, I'll try to get into the warehouse and shut it down.”

“Just don't take too long,” Joe said. “I'm starting to feel like that girl in
King Kong
already.”

Frank spotted a boarded-up door in the wall of the warehouse nearby. “Try to draw it to the other end of the alley,” he called to Joe.

Joe nodded and took off. Frank pressed himself against the nearest wall and stood motionless. The ape's red eyes locked on Joe and the fist followed. Frank sprinted to the door and gave it his best karate kick.

The boards broke, but not enough to let him in. He kicked again. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Joe down the alleyway, playing dodgeball with the giant fist. “Make it quick, will you?” the younger Hardy called to his brother.

The third kick made a large enough hole, and Frank pushed his way into the warehouse. Sure enough, the torso of the ape was connected to a huge mass of cables and wires inside the warehouse. Lights blinked on what Frank assumed must be a control panel.

He dashed to the panel, made a quick assessment of it, and then pulled on a large relay cable.

Immediately the ape's movements slowed. Its red eyes stopped flashing, and its roar wound down like the sound of a tape player when its batteries have suddenly gone dead. Joe came through the door as the giant ape ground to a halt.

“Thanks,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “That's about all the workout I need for today.”

“If you'd remembered to put the giant bananas in your backpack, this wouldn't have been a problem,” Frank said.

Joe smiled. “Let's go get Regina Cross.”

Frank nodded. The two of them left the warehouse and sprinted up the hill to the mansion. The house wasn't in much better repair than the rest of the town. It was a huge shell of a place with columns beside the entrance and gables on the roof. One solitary tower stretched above the roofline, but the light inside it—which the Hardys had seen previously—was out.

Despite its dilapidated appearance, the mansion did sport a new mat on the doorstep emblazoned with the word
Welcome
in bright red letters. As Frank and Joe studied the entryway, they heard a crash from somewhere back in the village.

“What do you think that was?” Frank asked.

“I think probably old Scavenger decided to go through that window after all,” Joe said. They could hear the strange whistling again, which seemed to be coming from the tower of the house.

“Then let's get inside and out of his range,” Frank said. “Maybe we can stop that whistling, too. I'd bet Cross has a loudspeaker up in that tower. Taking it out might slow Scavenger.” He was about to turn the doorknob when Joe stopped him.

“Wait,” Joe said. “In School of Chaos most of the doors were booby-trapped.” He pushed aside the doormat with his foot. Under it, the porch showed a suspicious seam. Carefully avoiding that spot, Joe opened the door.

Where the mat had been, a trapdoor opened. Frank and Joe looked into the hole but couldn't see the bottom. They stepped around it, entered the house, and closed the door behind them.

“That was in the second game?” Frank asked.

Joe nodded. “Yeah. Now that I think of it, we haven't run into
any
traps that weren't in the first two games—or the upcoming one. Nothing from the third game. Not even Bombo Bear. I wonder why?”

“Maybe Cross only wants to use game elements that her family worked on,” Frank said.

“Could be that ties into the ‘My past is the key to the future' clue,” Joe said.

Frank knitted his brow and said, “Hmm.”

“What is it?” Joe asked.

“I just had an idea about Regina Cross,” Frank said. “Where to, now?”

“Either up or down,” Joe said. “Prisoners are always kept in the tower or the dungeon.”

Just at that moment, the grandfather clock at the far end of the hall struck thirteen.

“Duck!” Joe shouted.

The Hardys ducked just as the clock face popped open and its hands shot down the corridor like arrows. They thunked harmlessly into the frame of the door.

“Thanks for the warning,” Frank said.

Joe nodded. “School of Chaos had deadly clocks. Made recess interesting. So, up or down?”

“I'm betting that the light in the tower was a red herring,” Frank said. “The whistling probably is, too, come to think of it. Let's see if we can find a way down.”

The brothers cautiously searched the first floor of the mansion. “If we can find the kitchen,” Frank said, “we can probably find the cellar door. Most old houses used the cellar for cold food storage.”

“Well, we won't be using our noses to find the kitchen,” Joe said. “Smells like all Regina Cross
has been cooking in here is mildew. She really needs to get a better housekeeper.”

They avoided an electrified rug in the living room and eventually made their way to the back of the house and the kitchen. Sure enough, one door in the kitchen opened onto a long descending staircase. Frank found a light switch and turned it on.

The stairs led down to a flagstone floor some twenty feet below. “Hold on to the railings,” Joe said. “I have a bad feeling about these stairs.”

He and Frank gripped the railings tightly as they went down the stairs. Good thing, too, because when they were halfway down, the stairs flattened under them and turned into a steep ramp. The Hardys' feet slipped out from under them, but their grip on the rails kept them from sliding into the pit that opened up at the bottom of the slide.

Using their arms like gymnasts on the parallel bars, they edged down the railings and then jumped off the sides near the bottom, landing on either side of the pit. Frank looked down into the hole. “Spikes at the bottom,” he said “Nasty. Our hostess plays rough.”

“No wonder she doesn't have many visitors,” Joe said.

They could hear some muffled sounds coming from beyond a door in the cellar's far wall. The
Hardys opened the door cautiously, first checking to make sure that no trapdoors would open under them. But as the door swung open, a cobra sprang out.

Frank and Joe jumped back. “Mechanical?” Frank asked. The six-foot snake seemed focused on him, its head weaving back and forth slightly.

“I hope so,” Joe said. He darted forward, grabbed the snake by the tail, and whipped its head against the cellar wall. Sure enough, sparks flew and the snake fell limp in his hands, wires hanging from where its head had been.

“Snake charmers have nothing on you,” Frank said.

Joe nodded. “Let's see who's behind this door.” Cautiously, the brothers stepped into the room. It was a plain chamber, with a flagstone floor and stone walls. Only one door, the door they came through, led from the room. In the center of the room sat a man tied to a chair. The man appeared to be of medium height and build and had a full beard and long brown hair. He had a gag in his mouth.

When he saw the Hardys, the man started bouncing up and down in the chair and making the muffled cries the Hardys had heard from outside. Joe dropped the snake at the man's feet and used his pocketknife to cut the ropes on the man's legs; Frank freed the man's upper body. As the
ropes fell away from his hands, the man pulled the gag from his mouth.

“You must be Steven Royal,” Joe said, still working on the lower ropes.

“She's crazy!” he said. “She was going to kill me!”

As he said it, a growl from behind them made the Hardys spin. A panel had opened in the far wall and through it stepped a thin blond woman with dark glasses. At her side loped Scavenger, the half-wolf. She had a loaded repeating crossbow in her hands. The bow was leveled at the Hardys, and she held the wolf by the scruff of the neck to keep it in check.

Joe, still crouched at the foot of the chair, cut the last of Royal's ropes and said, “Regina Cross, I presume.”

The woman in the doorway nodded and almost smiled. Scavenger growled at the Hardys and prepared to spring.

“Actually, she's not Regina Cross at all,” Frank said. “There is no Regina Cross. There never was. Isn't that right, Ms. Sakai?”

Joe whistled. “Of course!”

“So,” she said, taking off her dark glasses, “you figured out my little secret. I'm impressed.” She pulled off her blond wig as well and shook loose her long black hair. Anne Sakai dropped the wig and glasses to the floor. Slim and athletic, she looked like a video-game heroine come to life.

“The clues were all there,” Frank said, “but your apparent death kept us from figuring it out
too soon. But what Joe said about there being no traps from the third game and ‘My past is the future' helped me figure it out. You didn't work on that game, but you did work on the first two
and
the new one.

“That made me realize that we'd been misunderstanding part of the riddles,” Frank continued. “If Royal wasn't running this game, then it couldn't be
his
past the riddles referred to. And there was only one other person who had a history with the Chaos series—you. Joe was right about your not wanting to use anything from a game you hadn't worked on.”

“Call it vanity,” Sakai said, her voice tinged with sweet venom. “But I just never much liked the work of second-rate hacks. Especially on
my
project.”

“That's why you sent the wolf after us in the forest, rather than a bear,” Joe said, still bent over. As he spoke, his hand found the remains of the mechanical snake on the floor. He tightened his fist around its tail.

“The bear was a joke,” Sakai said. “And a bad one at that. That whole game was a joke, wasn't it, Steven?”

Royal turned red. “It was a good game!” he said. “It's not my fault if the public didn't like it.”

“The public didn't like it because I was the heart and soul of the Chaos series,” Sakai said,
fixing Royal with an icy stare. “You were nothing without me.”

“Well, you were nothing without me, either,” Royal said. He started to step forward, but a growl from Scavenger changed his mind. “That's why you came crawling back to work on A Town Called Chaos.”

“There was no Town Called Chaos before I contacted you,” Sakai said. “And there wouldn't be one without me—and there
won't
be.”