The Switch by Anthony Horowitz

Tad was hardly aware of the chamber anymore. He was floating, spinning, rocking, his mind far away. He thought the twins came back a couple of times. Once they wiped some of the cream off and added some cold liquid from a bottle. Another time they took his temperature. But he didn’t care. He was above it all.
    Somewhere an alarm went off and the boy who had been doused in the mauve steam was carried away, his skin a mass of bright spots. A girl was led into the telephone booth in his place. Tad whimpered. The cream was less cool now. He could feel it burning his skin. But he was too weak and giddy to cry out. He twisted around on his bed, looking for Marion Thorn.
    And then he saw a door open and a man step out. The man was far away, high up on a gantry, and Tad wasn’t sure at first if he was imagining things. It had to be the cream that was doing it to him. It couldn’t be true.
    But then Marion Thorn approached the man. The two of them exchanged a few words and Marion laughed. The man took out a cigar and lit it. And suddenly Tad knew.
    He was looking at the man behind ACID, the man who had set up the Center and who ran it.
    Sir Hubert Spencer.
    He was looking at his father.

BREAKOUT
    It was as if Tad had been plunged into freezing water. The strange, dreamlike state that the cream had thrown him into was suddenly shattered and he was wide-awake, struggling with his thoughts, trying to make sense out of what he knew to be true.
    The products in the Center. He knew what they all were, and had known from the moment he had been brought in.
    The boy under the lamps was coated in grapefruit-and-aloe suntan oil. The girl with her feet in the bucket was testing coconut corn remover. The girl in the green foam was trying out a cucumber-and-kiwifruit bubble bath. The boy in the shower was being sprayed with body lotion made from different types of seaweed, while the one in the telephone booth was being subjected to a beetroot-and-banana body rub.
    They were all products sold by Beautiful World. He had been seeing and smelling products like them all his life.
    Beautiful World.
     
    NONE OF OUR
PRODUCTS
ARE TESTED ON
ANIMALS
     
     
     
     
    But they were tested. On children!
    Tad was horrified. A sudden bleeping made him turn his head and he saw that the machine he was connected to had speeded up. It was a heart monitor—of course! He watched, fascinated, as his heart, beating rapidly now, sent huge peaks across the screen. But at the same time he forced himself to calm down. The doctors had loosened his straps, believing him to be in a trance. If any of them looked at the machine, they would know otherwise and he would be strapped down again.
    Tad lay back and closed his eyes. Gradually the heart monitor slowed and quieted. Could it be true? Beautiful World, owned by his parents, was taking kids off the street and using them as laboratory rats to test the safety of their products! And the charity that actually went out and found them—ACID—had also been set up by Sir Hubert and Lady Geranium.
    But that was impossible. That would make them . . .
    Monsters.
    Tad took a deep breath, then opened his eyes again.
    Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.
    The heart monitor had almost exploded and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Sir Hubert Spencer had climbed down a metal staircase and was heading straight for him, Marion Thorn at his side. Now it took every ounce of Tad’s will-power to bring himself back under control. He had to pretend to be drugged. It was his only chance.
    “He’s just over here, Sir Hubert . . .” Marion’s voice reached his ears. Not trusting himself, Tad closed his eyes once again. Suddenly he felt the presence of the man standing right next to him.
    His father.
    His enemy.
    No . . . !
    “So this is the boy?” A wisp of cigar smoke crossed Tad’s nostrils. “A nasty-looking piece of work. What’s he testing?”
    “The moon fruit, Sir Hubert. B/341.”
    “Any adverse effects?”
    “It’s much too