Floors: by Patrick Carman Read Free Book Online

sound.
    Leo thought of the other words Merganzer had written on the box.
    And bring the ball. You’ll need it.
     
    “All right, I will,” said Leo.
    He started walking toward the ladder, worried and nervous, as Remi’s voice blasted out of the two-way radio.
    “Captain Rickenbacker is on the move! He’s headed your way!”
    Leo had turned the room a deep shade of neon purple and opened a hole in the ceiling in the space of halfan hour. He had no idea how to make every thing go back the way it was.
    So he did what any kid would do: He threw the ball and the duck up into the hole, grabbed the purple box, and climbed up the ladder.

CHAPTER 5

     

T HE R OOM OF R INGS OR THE R ING OF R OOMS
     
    W hen Captain Rickenbacker placed his yellow key card into the slot for his room, he heard an unexpected sequence of sounds: a
swoosh,
a
slam,
and a charge of electric energy. He jumped back from the door as if it were covered in Kryptonite (he considered himself distantly related to Superman).
    “MR. M., I presume,” he whispered, for he was sure his enemy was inside rigging all sorts of traps in his beloved Pinball Machine.
    If Captain Rickenbacker could have seen what was happening on the other side of the door, it would have almost surely confirmed his suspicions.
    The ladder shot back from where it had come with stunning speed. The round door in the ceiling slammed shut. The lights in the Pinball Machine went back to the way they had been before.
    The Captain’s key card had activated a fail-safe to the Ring of Rooms.
    Stealth was not one of Captain Rickenbacker’s strong suits. He was more inclined to bold attacks and ninja moves. And so it was that he burst open the door and started shooting bowling balls into the room one right after the other, yelling all the while: “Take that! And that! And that!”
    Leo was alone on floor three and one half in an airtight room. There was no noise from above or below. Both the secret two-way radio and his walkie-talkie had lost their signals. He could not hear Captain Rickenbacker trying with all his superhero might to flush out MR. M. The only noise Leo could hear was Betty’s soft breathing, which was very soft indeed.
    “I think it’s time I opened the box again,” Leo said. Betty didn’t quack, but she seemed to approve of the idea, and Leo slid the cover off, staring inside. Over dinner he had figured out that the lid would slide onto the back of the box as well, and this he did so as not to leave it behind if he got lost in the maze.
    “I think I’m standing right here,” he said, setting thebox and the very large purple ping-pong ball on the floor next to him. He was pointing to a small, round mark on the floor of the model while Betty waddled off behind him.
    The box was full of colored rings of different sizes, and so was the room. All the walls in the real room were bright white, lit from behind frosty glass. And all the rings were positioned exactly where they were in the box. The advantage to having the box, it seemed to Leo, was that he knew how to navigate the complex maze before him.
    Betty quacked from farther away than Leo was comfortable with. She was a mischievous companion, known to wander off on her own, and he felt sure she was about to somehow open the door and send the ladder back into the room below. But when he looked over his shoulder, he saw that she was simply staring at a white wall of frosty glass, where a message had started to appear. Leo took three steps toward her through the only ringless space in the whole maze and watched as the words appeared. It was as if someone were behind the glass, writing on a foggy window with his finger.
Did you bring the ball?
Make it fly, make it fall.
   MR. M.
     
    Something fell out of the ceiling, missing Betty by a hair, and a dark shadow moved behind the glass. Leo jumped back, afraid of something in the Whippet Hotel for the first time in his life.
    He wasn’t alone in the Room of Rings, as he’d