boy stopped, turned around, and reluctantly walked back, having realized that he was too hasty to escape.
“Come in, let’s help him get out of there,” Arewa said as she met him at the doorstep.
The kids tried to free Omlion from the wooden captivity, but this only made the poor fellow scream indignantly. They pushed the panel trying to break it.
“What if we pull instead of pushing?” Arewa suggested. “If he managed to get there, he will also manage to get out. One! Two!”
On the count of three, the remains of the decorative panel fell apart with a crunch, and disheveled and slightly shocked Omlion got released from the prickly embrace.
The boy with glasses extended his hand to him and helped him get up.
“By the way, I’m Soul.”
“Omlion, very… very nice to meet you,” the boy said, shaking pieces of wood out of his hair. “And she is Arewa, my new neighbor.”
“What a coincidence,” Soul perked up. “So, all of us are neighbors!”
“Do you also live here?” Arewa asked with disappointment.
“Not really,” Soul replied. “My parents came here for vacation and brought me along.”
“Wow, lucky you. Ameed never brings me along on his trips.” Omlion sighed.
“Ameed?” Soul repeated as he picked up the drone, assessing the severity of the damage.
“My guardian and owner of the wall that you broke. He often flies to different countries… doing spiritual practices.”
“I don’t know about practices, but your guardian clearly has secrets,” Arewa said, nodding towards the passage that formed in the wall. “How about checking what’s there?”
Stone steps were visible in the opening. The stairs led down, dissolving in the dark, enticing children with their mystery and enigma, as they promised discoveries and perhaps even adventures.
On hearing the invitation, Soul pressed the remains of the drone to his chest and jabbered, “Oh, no, no, no, I’m not coming. I will have to repair it now, do reflashing; otherwise, dust may get inside or something…”
He stopped short, as he caught the kids staring at him.
“Aren’t you interested in what’s down there?” Omlion asked.
“I know pretty well how it all happens, I saw it in movies.” Soul straightened his glasses, which had slipped down. “First they will eat me, as I’m the… well…”
He hesitated, searching for the right word.
“Slowest?” Omlion couldn’t stop himself from saying this.
“The tastiest!” Soul flared. “What if your guardian is actually doing some creepy experiments down there? Then we will be the only witnesses. Oh no…” Soul’s voice trembled. Arewa was to blame, as she quickly grabbed Soul, who was about to sneak away again, by the collar.
“No way, hacker, you made this mess, and it’s up to you to sort it out. You are coming with us.”
“All right, all right, just let me go…” He snorted.
The kids descended the stairs to the basement with great caution. Omlion was walking ahead, Arewa was following him, calming down poor Soul, who refused to let go of the hem of her dress and was ready to do anything just to get out of this adventure as quickly as possible.
Flashlights on phones could barely cope with the thick darkness, highlighting fancy items of the interior. Passing by a worn-out bathroom where an ancient tube TV set rested, Omlion tried to shed some light to the depth of the basement, but the flashlight power was not enough.
“Can anyone see the switch?” Omlion enquired.
“Аah! There’s something moving here!” Soul shouted.
“It’s my leg!” the girl replied in a cold voice.
“Phew! Here, I think I’ve found some button!”
Click. The basement got filled with a quiet hum, and then a faint red light switched on and outlined the silhouette of the mechanism in the middle of the room. Corrugated pipes and various cables stretched between the boxes full of all sorts of junk. The web of wires ended where THIS began. In the middle of the basement, there was a large dark sphere with a red triangle in the center. Omlion approached it, hesitated for a while, and then put his hand on the metal surface and listened. “Guys, it’s warm… and it’s like… it’s singing!”
“I can hear it, too!” Arewa said, listening together with Omlion.
“I can’t hear anything, how about leaving this place?” Soul drawled, as he looked around.
“I think I know what this is!” Arewa exclaimed suddenly.
“No way!” Omlion turned around.
“There was a basement with the same thing at our old house. Broiler, I think… Wait, broiler is a chicken. Right, this is a water boiler!”
“Well, I’m not sure…” Soul interrupted as he walked along the cables. “Why would a water boiler need that much energy?
A bunch of wires led to a grey wall, on which someone mounted a stand with a monitor on it. There was some code running on the screen line by line. Once the boy approached it, a keyboard came out from under the monitor.
“What do you have there?” Omlion asked, while Arewa was staring at the flickering red triangle.
“There is some interface here,” the boy replied as he scanned the lines with his eyes. “According to the code, an enormous array of data is being uploaded now. And there are two options here. Either your guardian is the owner of the most advanced heating system in the world, or this is not a boiler at all.”
“А-а-а!” the girl screamed loudly. “It looked at me! It was watching!”
Jumping over a pile of boxes, Omlion ran up to her and stared at the sphere. Under the triangular glass, there was a tiny machine moving on a needle-thin hinge that glared with its ruby eye at the petrified children.
“Soul…” Omlion called, as he took Arewa’s hand and was slowly backing to the wall.
“Data uploaded! Wow!” Soul’s amazed voice came from the corner. “There are at least ten zettabytes here. The entire Internet doesn’t weigh that much!”
“This is, of course, very cool, but could you, well… switch the thing off?” Arewa shouted, trying to cover the growing hum coming from the center of the sphere.
“No problem,” the voice in the corner said. “There is even a switch here. How did I not notice it right away? It’s big and red!”
“Wait!” Omlion shouted, but it was too late.
The machine began to come to life under the gaze of the children. Once it got half a meter above the floor, it made a deafening low-frequency hum and started to draw various garbage and scrap
