“Most impressive,” Simon said, “but where are the . . . ” Just then he heard Flinch’s war cry over the monitor. “Look out, Albert!” he cried to the man on the screen. But it was too late. Simon watched as his hyperactive former teammate ran toward Albert at top speed, turning into a colorful blur before coming to a sudden stop. Flinch grabbed the man by one of his huge legs and lifted him off the ground like he was a marshmallow.
“I caught a bad guy! I caught a bad guy!” Flinch sang.
“Put me down,” Albert demanded, but when Flinch refused, he aimed his ray gun at the boy and fired. Flinch immediately dropped his prize and stared at his own hands in disbelief. Then, suddenly, the boy started running out of control until he slammed into a wall, face-first. He fell down, unconscious.
“What did you do to him?” a familiar voice yelled. Simon peered into the computer screen to see Matilda racing forward.
“You kids just stay back,” Albert stuttered. For a guy who wanted to be a superhero, he certainly didn’t have a lot of confidence. “Stay back!”
Matilda fired her inhalers and flew at him, kicking Albert in the head. The roly-poly man stumbled backward, struggling with his mask, which had slid down over his eyes. While he was disabled, Matilda went in for another attack, but Albert managed to fix his mask just in time to fire his weapon at her too. She fell to the floor with a painful thud.
Jackson and Ruby were next, and didn’t fare much better. As soon as they attacked, Albert shot them with the ray gun, as well.
When all four kids lay on the ground at Albert’s feet, Simon heard Ruby hiss, “So, are you another one of Heathcliff’s lackeys?”
Albert was confused. “I don’t know a Heathcliff. I work for Simon.”
“Oh, they’re the same guy. We also used to call him Choppers. He was one of us until he betrayed us and tried to destroy the world. Did he mention that to you?”
“I don’t need to know anything about him.”
“Well, you should know one thing, buddy. Your boss is a whiny crybaby filled with bitterness because he was never cool. It’s a fatal flaw and we will always beat him because of it. Unfortunately, you’re never going to get to tell him because you’re going to jail.”
“Whiny crybaby!” Simon cried. Everyone in the café stared at him but he didn’t care. “I will destroy you all! I will crush you into pulp and you will beg me for mercy but there will be none. Simon will have his revenge!”
“You ready for another root beer, kid?” the waitress asked.
Simon spun in his chair and gave her an angry look. “If you have any hope of a tip, I suggest you leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Fine,” the waitress grumbled and shuffled off to another customer. Simon turned back to the café’s computer and typed furiously. The “C” and backslash keys kept sticking, victims of too many spilled chai lattes. Still, what he had seen on the video had set his mind afire with inspiration. He would use Albert’s schematics to build a weapon big enough to knock out the world’s machines and put the human race in his control. And it looked as if there was nothing Gluestick, Wheezer, Braceface, Flinch, or Pufferfish could do about it. The other upside was that he would soon have enough money to move his base of operations to a proper secret lair where he wasn’t competing with birds, chipmunks, raccoons, and cats for space, and the rest of the evil villain community would stop laughing at him.
Now, with the money he was swiping from banks, he could build a new, glorious secret headquarters from which to devise evil plans. He typed furiously at the keyboard, making notes on his evil master bathroom, the evil solarium where he would devise evil plots, and the evil meeting room with the long, evil oak table where he would intimidate his evil underlings. But nothing made him smile like the evil mirrored room where he would taunt his enemies, causing them to believe there were thousands of him. He had seen that in a movie and it was supercool.
“The first thing I’m going to build in my new secret lair is an Internet café where I am the only customer,” he said loudly enough for the other customers to hear. “I will have robot waitresses who are not so incompetent and absolutely no one working on a blog.”
OOOOHHHHH! WASN’T THAT
EXCITING? YOU KNOW, A LOT
OF KIDS READ THAT AND FREAK
OUT. I’M SERIOUS. THE LAST
TEN CANDIDATES HAD TO BE
TAKEN TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL
FOR SOME “RELAXATION.”
ANYWAY, THE POWERS THAT BE
TOOK A LOOK AT YOUR CODE-
BREAKING SKILLS AND DECIDED
THAT IT WAS TIME TO TAKE
YOU TO THE NEXT LEVEL.
SO I’M GOING TO TEACH YOU
ABOUT SOMETHING CALLED A
SUBSTITUTION CIPHER WHEEL.
THIS IS A CODE METHOD THAT
GOES ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE
TIME OF JULIUS CAESAR, WHO,
WITH HIS TOGA, SANDALS,
AND LEAF HEADBAND, WAS
A TOTAL B.C. NERD.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS: YOU HAVE
TWO CIRCLES MADE FROM THE
LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET.
TRACE OR COPY THE CIRCLES
ONTO A PIECE OF PAPER AND CUT OUT THE CIRCLES.
OR, BETTER YET, CUT THIS BOOK
UP NOW AND GO OUT AND BUY
ANOTHER ONE TO READ—THAT’S
EXCELLENT FOR SALES.
OH, BUT THIS IS AN EBOOK. NEVER MIND!
ALL RIGHT. NOW PAY ATTENTION,
’CAUSE THIS IS WHERE IT GETS
TRICKY. YOU MAKE COPIES OF THE
CIRCLES AND THEN CUT THEM OUT.
TAKE THE LITTLE CIRCLE AND PUT
IT ON TOP OF THE BIG CIRCLE
SO THAT ONE IS INSIDE THE
OTHER. GOT IT? GOOD.
NOW YOU CHOOSE A “KEY LETTER”
FOR THE SMALLER CIRCLE. THIS
LETTER WOULD BE SOMETHING ONLY
YOU AND THE RECIPIENT OF YOUR
MESSAGE WOULD KNOW. IF YOU HAVE
A KEY LETTER, LINE IT UP WITH
THE “A” ON THE BIG CIRCLE.
THE LETTERS ON THE BIG
CIRCLE ARE THE ACTUAL
ALPHABET AND THE ONES ON
THE INNER CIRCLE ARE YOUR
CODE ALPHABET. SELECT THE
CODE LETTERS THAT LINE UP
WITH THE LETTERS OF
YOUR SECRET MESSAGE
AND WRITE THEM DOWN.
HERE, LET’S TRY. I’M ASSIGNING
THE LETTER “M” AS MY KEY
LETTER. SEE IF YOU CAN
DECIPHER MY SUPERSECRET
MESSAGE.
EQDUAGEXK, PA EAYQFTUZS MNAGF KAGD RQQF.
FTQK EYQXX XUWQ M OAYNUZMFUAZ AR QSSE MZP
RMDFE. KAG’DQ XGOWK FA TMHQ M RDUQZP XUWQ
YQ ITA IUXX FQXX KAG ITQZ KAG’DQ RGZWK.
SORRY, BUT YOU CLEARLY
AREN’T GETTING THE MESSAGE.
Duncan heard something cracking above him and watched as the metal ceiling turned from black to red to white-hot. He quickly realized that someone was using a blowtorch to cut through the vault—probably Matilda and her enhanced inhalers. He wished he could free himself from his own glue, but all he could do was watch. It was all very embarrassing.
Finally, a portion of the roof fell to the ground and Agent Brand poked his head inside. He stared at Duncan for a moment and frowned. The man’s disappointment felt like a punch in the belly.
“We’ll get you out of here soon, son,” Brand said.
Duncan quietly wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to be trapped underground forever.
“Gluestick, did you hear me?” Ms. Holiday said. She and Agent Brand were watching him through a glass window in an adjacent room back at the Playground as a bank of green lights danced across his body. “Scans are showing that every nanobyte in your body has been infected with a computer virus that is destroying them one by one. Two-thirds of them are already off-line and the rest will be gone wi
thin the hour.”
“Which means what exactly?” Duncan said.
“You’re powerless,” Benjamin said as the tiny orb hovered about the boy’s face. “At least for the time being. You see, the nanobytes that give you your abilities are nothing more than microscopic computers. In your case, they produce the adhesive in your skin that makes you sticky. The ray gun that was fired at you basically rewrote their code, causing many of them to burn themselves out. The rest are acting most peculiar—like they are obeying completely different instructions.”
“I know how the nanobytes work,” Duncan said. He could feel a panic rising inside of him. “What are we going to do about it?”
“Gluestick, you and the rest of the team will have to have the nanobytes extracted and then we can put you through the upgrade process once more.”
Duncan sighed. “I shouldn’t have just barged in when I had no idea what or who was waiting for me.”
“Duncan, you’re being too hard on yourself,” Ms. Holiday said. “You were concerned for the bank manager and—”
Agent Brand interrupted. “Actually, it was a major blunder.”
Ms. Holiday bit her lip. “That is not helpful,” she whispered.
“Gluestick has been trained by the best. He knows better than to race into the unknown,” Brand said, standing his ground.
“How are the others?” Duncan asked. “Are they OK?”
“They’ve already gone through the scans and the results have been the same, Duncan,” the librarian replied.
“You don’t think Heathcliff’s found some way to. . . you know, hypnotize machines the way he can people and animals, do you?” Duncan asked.
“It’s our job to find out,” Brand said. “When will the team be ready?”
“Three days,” Benjamin said.
“Three days!” Brand cried. “Simon might control the world in three days!”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to remove all of the nanobytes in each of the operatives.”
“But Benjamin, we’ve taken the upgrades out of people before,” Ms. Holiday said.
“Last year we took them out of Jackson and put them back in a couple days later,” Duncan reminded them. “It didn’t take three days for him to be back online.”
“Jackson’s nanobytes were receptive to my commands,” Benjamin explained. “I asked them to leave and then asked them to return. The nanobytes in your body aren’t listening. I’m going to have to hunt them down, one by one, until they are all collected. If I were to leave even one behind, it could infect the new ones. I can, however, reinstall the nasal implants that link the team with me.”
Brand growled. “Get to work, Benjamin.” He stormed out of the room, leaving Ms. Holiday alone to look in on Duncan.
“OK, well, don’t worry, Gluestick,” Ms. Holiday said. “Just relax and we’ll have you back to fighting shape in no time.”
It took all Duncan’s strength to smile back. Inside he was feeling embarrassed, depressed, and foolish.
Duncan spent much of the day lying on a table inside the upgrade room having his nanobytes removed. He hadn’t really noticed before, but he could feel them inside him. It was a subtle sensation, and not unpleasant, but as more and more of them were extracted, he felt more and more empty.
“While we are here, perhaps you would like to give me some information about your odd attacker,” Benjamin said. “Perhaps we can put together a sketch from your details.”
“Well, he was about five seven, maybe five eight, though his boots might have given him an inch or two.”
Benjamin began to spin, and a million particles of light filled the room. Suddenly, there was a stick figure as tall as a man standing before him.
“Anything else?”
“He had kind of let himself go,” Duncan said, pulling his T-shirt down over his own exposed belly. “He probably weighed three hundred pounds.”
Suddenly the stick figure expanded into the shape of an obese man.
“Any facial features?”
“I didn’t see much,” Duncan said. “He was wearing a black mask that covered his face and hair. Oh, yeah. He had red eyebrows. He must be a redhead.”
The stick figure grew red hair. Then a black mask was placed over its face, showing only the eyes.
“Eye color?”
“I don’t know,” Duncan said. “It happened so fast.”
“We have some security footage, but we never got a shot of his face. Let me see if I can combine your description with what the cameras captured,” Benjamin said. Suddenly, the round stick figure had hands and fingers. His costume was black and green, with a cape and a cursor symbol on the chest. Benjamin added boots and gloves and a belt buckle, but the face was not there.
“It’s not a lot.” Duncan sighed.
“Let me know if you remember anything else,” the orb chirped. “I’ll send this to Mr. Brand. As for your nanobytes, I think we’re through for the day. Go home and get some rest.”
Duncan exited through the lockers and walked down the school halls as students spilled out of classrooms, headed for their buses. He felt small and weak. When he was full of superpower, he had strolled along without a care. Sure, a school bully might confront him, but he had always taken this in stride. After all, he was an international spy. He traveled the world. He could stick to walls. His double life had always been the great equalizer. No matter how many wedgies he received, he could smile with the knowledge that he was special. Now he was average. . . again.
Flinch met him outside. They decided to skip the bus ride and walk home.
“This must be very hard on you,” Duncan said to his friend. “Your upgrades not only give you abilities, they help control your hyperactivity.”
Flinch looked visibly shaky. “Benjamin said that I should stay away from candy and soda until I’m back online. You have no idea how hard it is not to stuff my face with graham crackers right now.”
“I’m sorry. It was my fault we got zapped,” Duncan said.
“You’re being crazy, D. You can’t blame yourself because you were surprised. We all thought we’d find Simon, not some giant tub of a dude having a midlife crisis with a ray gun. You did exactly what I would have done. Plus, you bought us a three-day vacation. It’ll give Jackson a chance to catch up on his reports.”
“Three days of being regular,” Duncan said. The thought gave him the jitters.
“I know how I can cheer you up,” Flinch said. “You can invite me over for dinner. I am an amazing dinner guest and I know how much the Creature likes me.”
Duncan wanted to laugh, but his dismal mood hung over him like a rain cloud.
Dinner at Duncan’s house was always a noisy affair. His family enjoyed discussing their days, usually all at once. There was a genuine excitement about being together. Aiah told them about a family she was working with who was trying to get out of a homeless shelter. Avery talked and talked about the Aston Martin he had worked on that afternoon, and how exhilarating it was to take it for a test drive. “I felt like a spy,” he said, smiling at his son. The Creature complained about teachers, boys, girls, her friends, her enemies, Duncan, her parents, and everyone else who crossed her path.
“And what about you two?” Aiah asked as she snatched the bag of peppermints out of Flinch’s hand and put another scoop of lima beans on his plate. “I know you can’t tell me everything, but did anything exciting happen today?”
Duncan and Flinch shared a look.
“Same old same old, Mrs. Dewey,” Flinch said. “Just another boring day at school.”
“Oh, I hate when you say that,” Aiah sighed. “It always makes me think something dangerous happened and you just aren’t allowed to talk about it.”
“I’m sure they both got wedgied and shoved into lockers,” the Creature said. “Same old story for members of the nerd herd.”
“Be nice, Tanisha,” Avery said.
“Relax, Dad,” the Creature said. “Flinch and dumb-dumb here ha
ve superpowers. I’m sure they can handle my insults.”
Duncan and Flinch shared another uncomfortable look.
After dinner, the boys insisted on loading the dishwasher. Duncan couldn’t wait to get his hands on the remote control. Pressing its buttons gave him comfort after such a depressing day. He typed in a code and soon a robotic arm was snatching dirty dishes off the dining room table, rinsing them, and inserting them into the slots of the dishwasher. Then it closed the door and the machine started its cleaning cycle.
Avery watched the action from the kitchen table. He was scanning the classified section of the newspaper for auto parts. He had been restoring a 1968 Ford Mustang convertible since before Duncan was born. It took up most of the garage. Besides a paint job, it was nearly complete. Avery wanted every part to be from the original make, and they weren’t easy to find. Some weekends he spent hours digging through the local junkyard for the finishing touches—rearview mirrors, factory hubcabs, and an original AM radio.
“You and your machines,” he said now with a sigh. “You want to see a real machine, look out in the garage. The Mustang is a machine made with love and care. There’s a heart to it.”
“That’s true, but can the Mustang do this?” Duncan asked as he pushed a few more buttons on his remote. Suddenly, the cabinets opened and a robotic hand opened the dishwasher and tossed the clean dishes into the air. They landed in the cabinets with perfect aim and without a chip. Everything was put away in a flash.
Avery rolled his eyes. “You kids are never going to understand. I can appreciate a fancy gadget. All I’m saying is, don’t let all these gizmos make you lazy—both in the body and the mind.” He snatched up his paper and headed off to the living room.