Chapter 13

After many false turnings and dead ends, Parveen finally found his way to a shaft that ended a few metres short of the gateway. He huddled behind a broad-bladed exhaust fan, its metal arms swinging lazily as they siphoned away heat from the infernal machine.

Sitting so close to the gateway was difficult. First of all, the ring of metal emitted a sickly glow that was difficult to look at. Parveen raised a gloved hand to his goggles and flipped through a sequence of filters that blocked different kinds of light: infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. Nothing seemed to ease the nausea he felt as the weird light cast its glow over him. He hypothesized that perhaps the light was from a spectrum not of this Earth.

He observed the Grey Agents below as they scuttled here and there servicing the banks of computers that regulated the machine. They wore no special protective gear to shield them from the energy radiating out of the device. Either they were used to it or …

“Maybe it’s natural for them,” Parveen whispered to himself. “Maybe it isn’t dangerous to them because it comes from their home environment.” He gasped as a realization struck him. “It’s a gateway to their home world.”

Parveen’s ruminations were interrupted by a mechanical hum coming from the ventilation shaft behind him. Someone was coming! Had they found him? Had he tripped some alarm?

He was at the end of the shaft. There was no escape route. The only way out was back towards the approaching sound or out through the fan and into the gateway chamber below. That way would lead to certain discovery. He had only the camouflage of the sneaky suit to protect him. Pressing himself against the shaft wall, he checked his hands and his hood to make sure every centimetre of his skin was covered. Satisfied, he held his breath and waited.

The mechanical hum grew louder. After what seemed an eternity, a robot rounded the final corner. The machine was basic: a tracked vehicle with mechanical arms ending in articulated claws attached to a vague torso, making the robot vaguely anthropomorphic.⁵⁴ Parveen sucked in his breath, trying to make himself as small as possible as the machine passed by him and went straight to the fan housing.

A maintenance robot. Parveen breathed out softly. Perhaps he hadn’t been detected. The robot was doing routine upkeep on the ventilation system.

The robot’s arms extended, telescoping out until the articulated claws could reach the housing of the fan motor. A tiny nozzle emerged from the tip of one claw. With a hiss, oily liquid sprayed out of the nozzle into a hole in the housing. Having finished its lubrication procedure, the nozzle retracted, followed by the arms. The robot’s inner workings whirred and clicked, its torso spun, and it headed back the way it came.

As it passed Parveen, it stopped. Parveen held his breath again. The torso spun in his direction. A tiny camera irised out from the centre of the torso. For a few seconds it tried to focus on Parveen’s chest. After a number of whirs and clicks, it gave up. The camera retracted, the torso spun, and the robot trundled off up the ventilation shaft without a backwards glance.

Parveen’s heart slowed and he breathed deeply. He would have to be careful. The suit had succeeded in hiding him again, but he would have to be very cautious from now on. With a final look out at the terrible gate, he turned and headed off after the robot to continue his investigation of the ventilation shafts. He felt better and better every step he took away from the gateway. He didn’t know how harmful the energy of the other world was to him, but he knew he didn’t want to spend more time than necessary in close proximity to the horrible apparatus.

Already very difficult to detect in his sneaky suit, Parveen was certain he could become a veritable ghost now that he had the ventilation shafts as his own personal thoroughfare. He doubted that the Grey Agents ever entered the shafts. But he would have to be careful to avoid the little maintenance robots. He made his way by memory back to the place he had designated as his sleeping quarters. Ensconced in his hideaway, Parveen sat with his back to the wall. He reached into the hood of his suit to pluck the stub of pencil from behind his ear. Rummaging in his backpack, he found a crumpled sheet of paper. He smoothed out the paper on his knee and made a list.

“Number One: I’m alone,” he said softly as he wrote. “Number Two: Noor is safe for the time being. Number Three: I know the Grey Agents use the older children as hosts. Hypothesis: The big apparatus in the main chamber is a huge version of the machines they use to possess their human hosts.”⁵⁵ He shuddered at the thought of being possessed by one of the entities calling themselves Grey Agents. Who knew what their true nature was? Their human forms were gruesome enough. “Lucky that Noor didn’t qualify,” Parveen murmured to himself. He had no idea what the long-term effects of being used as a battery were, but they had to be better than becoming a Grey Agent. He wondered if the process of becoming an agent was reversible. Did the person possessed still exist somewhere within the unlucky body? He hoped so, for Aidan’s sake. And for Hamish X’s. The golden hue of the Grey Agents’ eyes was so like Parveen’s friend’s eyes. What did that mean? Was Hamish X doomed to be like the Grey Agents? Was he one of them deep down in his soul? Did he have the potential for their wickedness and evil? Parveen could only hope that the colour of his eyes was the only trait Hamish X shared with these entities who were bent on enslaving the Earth.

A thought struck him: if the agents were really people who had been possessed by entities from another world, when they were killed was the human host killed as well? It was a terrible thought. He had cast a female agent from the Orphan Queen during the assault on the Hollow Mountain. Had he killed some poor human being as well as the agent? He felt a stab of guilt but ruthlessly crushed it a second later. They were at war with the ODA. The Grey Agents had to be defeated. When the war was over, there would be plenty of time for guilt and soul-searching.

Parveen looked at his list. What he knew was very scant indeed. He had to learn more and try to find a weakness to exploit.

“First things first,” he whispered, turning over the sheet of paper. He began to draw the beginnings of a map of the ventilation system. The very act of making a blueprint calmed him. He was not exactly happy, but he was making a plan and that was something, at least. He always felt better when he had a plan.