IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

25 FEBRUARY, THURSDAY, CONTINUED

Right now, the Beta House basement resembled... I wouldn't call it a lab. Labs were supposed to be white and clean, right? Maybe it was more of a lair - like someplace a guy like BenX would call home.

When I was very young, this place used to be a locked room.

"What's there?" I had asked Beta Lucas. Back then, I had to point upwards and still not reach the door knob.

"It's where I keep my skeletons." Beta Lucas told me with a grin, "Everyone has a skeleton or two in their closet you know."'

No, I didn't know. I had never owned such a thing in my life, but I assumed it was what grown ups had. Maybe it was what Dad and Mum kept in their safe.

When I got older (and taller), I told Ben and Lizzy about it.

"But that's just our basement." Lizzy told me, "Mum does the laundry there."

"That's just what they want us to think." Ben smirked, "There is this sound..."

Apparently, the twins had heard noises in the night coming from under their house.

"Grooooaawwwnn..." Ben tried to replicate the sound.

"Mum says its the dryer." Lizzy said.

"Oh you naive little puppy." Ben told his twin.

Even though I was always more inclined to believe Lizzy, I couldn't help but worry because Ben's imitation sounded nothing like any dryer I've ever heard.

We had to get to the bottom of it, so we made a plan to distract Beta Lucas and steal his keys... but none of the keys fit. And then Ben realized, "Arugh! Stupid! Mum's the one who does the laundry!"

It turned out Mrs Beta leaves the key in a glass bowl on the kitchen counter, so that was really too easy. Ben broke the bowl, just for the fun of it.

Then Ben, Lizzy, Savy, and I turned on the TV in the back room, and snuck down to the Beta House's "laundry room" to look for skeletons.

The laundry room was only a small corner of the basement. To my little eyes, the space was huge and piled up with junk. We found countless unlabeled boxes of the twin's baby clothes, the twins tricycles, old rolls of wall paper, a hundred spiderwebs, but only three actual spiders... Lizzy and Savy didn't like the spider webs. Ben and I did most of the exploring, but there were no skeletons here.

By the time we got back upstairs, we were covered in dust.

"Have any of you pups seen my keys?" Beta Lucas asked, and then he realized he was talking to 4 dust bunnies, "Hoo man, have you pups been playing under the bed?"

"We found your skeletons." Ben lied. He was still determined to fish it out from his dad.

"Oh." Beta Lucas frowned. And then he grinned at us again, "What did he tell you?"

"What did who... THE SKELETON CAN TALK?" I gasped, my eyes widening in horror.

Beta Lucas nodded, "Are you sure you pups found one? Ah, you left the door open."

He shut the basement door, "You don't want it coming up to look for you tonight, do you?"

I don't know why the adults thought it was a good idea to let Beta Lucas babysit a bunch of pups. I slept in Savy's bed for a full week. I heard Mrs Beta tell Mum about how Lizzy cried for three nights before she had to bring the twins down and turn on the dryer to show them that the noises were really from the old dryer.

"I wish Lucas would hurry and replace it!" Mrs Beta concluded.

Later on, Mrs Beta got her way and Beta Lucas did replace the old washer and dryer. They even cleaned out their basement and carpeted the open section of it to make a den for us kids. It had bean bags and a playhouse and toy boxes stacked neatly on one side.

Everything was great until one winter, when we were all snowed in at his place, and there was NO ICE CREAM. After that Beta Lucas bought a freezer to stock up on ice cream, and then another because while buying ice cream in bulk to fill that freezer, he found out that you could buy frozen meat in bulk and save money. And then he stocked up on canned food, toilet paper, bottled water - you name it, he had it.

"If ever there's an emergency, all of you can stay here." Beta Lucas had promised.

And then Dad made a single comment, "As long as the emergency doesn't cut off the power, or everything in your freezer would be wasted."

Beta Lucas bought a power generator, so now, even if the power got cut, he could just power up the generator to run his freezers, and the basement lights.

Our beanbag paradise was relegated to the other side of the den, and the toys and playhouse were donated - I guess something had to give.

This year, Beta Lucas had installed the screens and computers because he wanted to use technology to monitor rogue movement. We got to use them twice so far (although not exactly the way Beta Lucas had envisioned it). But now, Ben had pretty much rigged the whole place up with an assortment of mismatched tables, screens, and computers. There were computers on the tables, under the tables, and even computers just sitting in the middle of the floor.

"I used to have to stay up all night to decode something, but since rigging this farm up, I can process several security layers stimultanously. I can even process the basic ones 24/7." Ben looked very proud of himself, "It's one of the beauties of automation."

Wow. I mean the sheer number of screens and computers, not whatever Ben just said. I looked at the quietly whirring machines in a row on the ground. I imagined them to be like cows lowing softly in their stalls.... I mean, Ben did call it a farm, right?

Ben's farm didn't look particularly high tech, I wouldn't call it farm-like either. To my untrained eye, it looked like rectangular computer boxes in two rows, facing back to back plugged in with a tangle of wires, and then connected to another larger computer box. It was all really makeshift looking. There was even an electric fan - like a very ugly white and blue one on one side, pointed to blow between two rows of machines.

In the other corner was a mountain of opened boxes and packaging. So I could tell that a lot of this stuff had only recently come out from their boxes, but everything else, the tables, the two roller chairs... they all looked mismatched, like Ben had hauled them in from random places.

There was only one cool thing and it was on top of one of these repurposed table. This one was transparent box so you could see the computer parts inside. It also had pink and blue led lights in it.

"That's cool!" I commented.

Ben smirked, "Yeah, I thought you'd appreciate that. It's purely asthetic though, the lights."

I nodded, "I knew that."

Ben chuckled, "You're too easy to impress, Sam."

I wasn't going to let him diss me like that, "Why? Are you trying to impress me?"

Ben shrugged, "I was offered a discount, and since it was the FAO money, I thought to get something you'd appreciate."

As if I would be impressed by some cool looking lights! Did he think I was still a pup? Oh wait, "You're using the FAO money to fund your hacking activities?"

Ki lifted a brow at that, "Really, beta?"

"No!" Ben shook his head, "Sam! Of course not! I run BenX from school. This stuff is for the FAO."

I was quite sure whatever Ben was doing at school had to be against the school rules, if not the law.

"BenX, beta?" Ki inquired lightly.

Ben seemed to realise he was caught now, "Scrap that, dog. Stay out of my stuff."

Then he decided it would be best to change the subject.

"Okay, I've set up Luna's new laptop." Ben led us over to a table where he had a laptop plugged in and a large TV screen propped precariously against the wall behind it.

"That was fast." Ki smiled.

"It wasn't hard." Ben said, "I bought the same laptop and exchanged the drives."

"It looks very different for the same laptop." Ki pointed out.

Ben ran a hand over black frame, "I also upgraded the casing - not that it would do much if our Luna threw it again, but it would withstand a bit more shock than before."

"Also, besides extracting the earlier data, I've planted a nice fat worm." Ben pushed some random items and tools to one side before sitting down and powering on the laptop to show us.

"So now both his smart phone and laptop are essentially in our control. This new worm though, will encrypt and mirror his computer to our back up servers so we can get the rest of the information we need without having to trouble our Luna."

Because Ben was always so considerate.

"I've included a one-handed gesture screen too." Ben waved and grasped his hand in a fist. The TV screen came on, mirroring whatever was on Bell's laptop.

"Cool!" I stepped up to try, but Ben pushed me gentle but firmly to the side, "This isn't a toy, Sam."

"It's connected to his laptop and responds to movement. I've also installed voice recognition and enabled speech text." Ben smirked, "So Luna won't feel so frustrated using the laptop in the future."

Because yes, my Luna was one-handed now, and after failing to type fast enough, slammed his laptop against the wall this morning.

"You can bring the laptop back to him, dog. The instructions to set up the voice recognition and other security features is in this note doc on his desktop" Ben continued in monotone, "I'll have Ink go over and install the TV later."

"Understood, beta." Ki smiled.

Were Ink and Cobra the reason for the extra chairs in Ben's lair? The space looked like it was set up for three to four work spaces.

"Where's Ink and Cobra?" I wondered how they were getting along with Ben.

"Ink's on patrol. Cobra's just somewhere." Ben shrugged if off, "I was wondering why you assigned these dogs under me at first... but they were surprisingly useful. That was pretty smart, Sam."

What was pretty smart?

"Of course!" Ki was immediately at my defense, "Did beta think goddess would have randomly assigned our assistants to us? It's obvious now that from the onset she had carefully screened and selected them to complement our personalities and duties."

"Yeah, that's what Harvey said too." Ben narrowed his eyes at me, "How did you know though?"

I shrugged haplessly. How did I know what? Ben you should know me better than that! I was just winging it.

"No, don't tell me. You were just winging it." Ben held up his hand with a smirk, "Whatever, Sam. You're the alpha. I won't question you."

Ben got up and unplugged the laptop. He handed the black rectangular thing to Ki, "I don't suppose our lovely luna would notice if we taped it down to his desk with nano-tape this time?"

Ki beamed, like a flower to the sun, "Should I inform our lovely luna of your esteemed recommendation, beta?"

Hahahaha,

"Let's go back up. The girls know you're here, and Lizzy's threatening to tell on me if I don't return you." Ben put his hand on the small of my back to push me towards the stairs up, "Remember, you're still grounded, so we didn't discuss any work. I only showed off my new toys."

Eh, since when did we discuss work? But we were already up the stairs and I could hear the girl's laughter.