An eerie buzzing sound met him as the doors of the elevator swooshed open. Scale sniffed the musty air. There it was again! He frowned uneasily. It sounded like … bees. As he walked, bowlegged, down the corridor, Scale couldn’t help noticing that the sound was getting louder. He shook his head; it was as though the noise was coming from the end of the corridor.

There can’t be any bees here, he told himself. He had ensured that all Proteus staff had express orders to exterminate bees. It was a bee-free area! Scale checked his pockets frantically. Where was his injectable adrenaline? He was allergic to bee stings: If he was stung, his throat would close. He wouldn’t be able to breathe without the injection….

Scale forced himself to calm down. He couldn’t hear the buzzing noise now; he must have imagined it. He gulped. Bees were the only thing that could frighten him. And there are no bees here, he told himself sternly.

Scale reached the cell where he had imprisoned the meddling Carver boy and his Wolven friend. He recovered his swagger as he peered through the tiny window in the door. The boys had taken his advice and gone to sleep, he noted with satisfaction.

Scale opened the heavy door cautiously. He was not so stupid as to just assume the boys really were asleep; it could be a trick. The Wolven stirred a little as the old door made a groaning noise. Scale cocked his awful head toward the Carver boy, who looked quite pale, save for the black eye he had sustained when he was thrown into the cell.

But what was this? Lucas Scale whirled around in panic. Through the open doorway, almost in military order, flew battalions of bees, billions of bees! How had this happened?

The buzzing filled Scale’s head with white noise, his arms flailing wildly to stave off the bee attack. He was too busy to notice that the Carver boy and the Wolven had risen to their feet.

“Run!” howled Woody. “Go, go, go!”

Scale howled, too, with rage and confusion, as the two boys fled.

“Just fantastic,” murmured Gabriel Gruber. “Willya look at that?”

The Spaghetti brothers watched the TV monitor as the two boys belted through the subterranean corridors of Helleborine Halt. Still outside the empty cell, Lucas Scale had clearly gone insane. He looked as though he were doing some form of inelegant break dancing.

“What’s he doing?” wondered Angelo Spaghetti in fascination. “Is he … ‘krunking’?”

“I think I smell a rat,” said Gabriel Gruber happily. “The Wolven is behind this. He’s made poor, ugly Lucas see something that isn’t there!”

“Whatever it is, it’s made him go berserk,” said Vincent, amazed. “Look at him. He thinks he’s under attack from something.”