Benjamin clicked and a voice filled the room. It had a determined, almost fevered intensity. “You are smarter than everyone else. Everyone you know is a fool. They don’t respect your intellect. But they will pay. Oh yes, they will pay. When you take over the world, they will fall to their knees and beg for your mercy, but they will find you have none! They shouldn’t have laughed at you. You will have the last laugh!”
“That voice!” Pufferfish said.
“It’s Heathcliff,” Brand snarled. “Even when he’s asleep, he’s trying to take over the world. We need to lock down the facility.”
“You can’t lock us in,” Ms. Holiday said.
“Ms. Holiday is correct,” Dr. Kim said. “We’re the only group capable of dealing with the insanity out there. If the team is trapped down here, the problems will get worse.”
“What are your projections, Dr. Kim?” General Savage asked. “What kind of time do we have before it goes global?”
A sectional map of the world appeared on all of the screens. It was scattered with red dots, mostly concentrated on the East Coast of the United States and Western Europe. But as Brand studied the map the dots began to spread. The map zoomed out to show the entire world, and the little red dots appeared on every continent. The dots multiplied faster and faster, and soon there wasn’t an inhabited place on Earth that wasn’t bright red.
“How long?” the lunch lady asked.
“Three days,” Benjamin said. “Maybe longer.”
“But not much longer,” Dr. Kim added.
Brand looked around the room. “So what do we do?”
The group grew very quiet.
Brand slammed his hand down on a desk. “Nothing? We don’t have a plan? We’re just going to let the world end?” He shuddered, envisioning the inevitable. When would Ms. Holiday succumb? The lunch lady? General Savage? The team? What would happen when it was his turn and he was dreaming of taking over the world or building a freeze ray?
“If the virus is mechanical in nature, can’t we just send out an electromagnetic pulse? That usually disables electronics,” Duncan said.
“We tried that,” Dr. Kim said. “Heathcliff’s nanobytes have developed some kind of shield. Perhaps the machine that installed them in his head understood that one EMP blast could kill him, so it came with protection.”
“What about Heathcliff?” Savage said. “If he’s got some transmitter inside him, can’t we just go in and take it out?”
“You’re suggesting some sort of operation,” Ms. Holiday said.
“It’s in his brain, right? Would he survive it?” Pufferfish asked.
“We’ve thought of that, too,” Dr. Kim said. “We located the transmitter, but—”
“Then cut it out!” Savage cried.
“It’s not that simple, sir,” Dr. Kim said.
“The transmitter is as small as a nanobyte, which is microscopic,” Benjamin twittered. “If we had a surgeon who could find it, he or she would have to cut into Heathcliff’s brain, which in its current state is enormous. There isn’t a doctor alive who would know how to find it.”
“And it could kill Heathcliff,” Dr. Kim added.
There was a silence in the room.
“No,” Brand said. “Heathcliff may be an insane monster and full of alien robots, but he is still an eleven-year-old boy.”
“But we’re talking about the end of the world here!” Savage barked.
“We still have at least three days, sir,” Brand said.
“I agree with Agent Brand,” Dr. Kim said. “We’ve got a team of one hundred of the smartest scientists to ever walk the planet dedicating all their considerable brainpower to coming up with a solution.”
“So what do we do in the meantime?” Ms. Holiday asked.
“We screen everyone on the team for infections,” Dr. Kim said. “We’ll do it every couple of hours. Anyone who has as an alien nanobyte will be quarantined immediately to prevent him or her from infecting others.”
“Everyone?” Ms. Holiday asked.
“Better safe than sorry,” Agent Brand said. “Doctor, what can we do to help the science team?”
“Stay out of the way and let us do our work,” Dr. Kim said. “And perhaps spend some time with the people you love while you still can. They may try to take over the world at any minute.”
“If that’s all, the children should get to class,” Ms. Holiday said. “The new principal is watching them like a hawk.”
“Can we stop with the bird references?” Jackson said.
The lunch lady nodded his head in agreement. “Listen, we’re going to have to do something about her and quick. She’s taken too big of an interest in the team.”
Brand nodded. “It’s on the list. Right now, we’ve got more important things to do than worry about Ms. Dove.”
“Easy for you to say,” Flinch remarked. “You haven’t been in detention twice this week. I’m starting to get a reputation.”
“Yeah, I hear some of the kids even think he’s cool,” Jackson said.
WOW, WATCHING YOU DO ALL THIS EXERCISING IS EXHAUSTING. I NEED TO SIT DOWN AND TAKE A BREAK. PHEW! NO, I’M FINE. I JUST GET A LITTLE WINDED SOMETIMES. ALL RIGHT, LET’S GET BACK INTO IT.
THE NEXT FITNESS CHALLENGE IS A LITTLE THING I CALL “BOOK HEFTING.” WHAT YOU DO IS TAKE A BOOK AND THROW IT AS FAR AS YOU CAN.
WHY?
WELL, THERE ARE TWO REASONS. FIRST, IT WILL SHOW US HOW STRONG YOU ARE, AND SECOND, IT WILL MOST LIKELY DESTROY THE BOOK AND YOU WILL HAVE TO BUY ANOTHER ONE—CHA-CHING!
SO, BEND AT THE KNEES AND THROW YOUR BOOK WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. THEN USE A TAPE MEASURE TO CALCULATE HOW FAR YOU TOSSED IT.
WHAT’S THE DISTANCE?
WOW, I HOPE YOUR BOOK ISN’T FROM THE LIBRARY.
Duncan invited Flinch to stay with his family now that Mama Rosa was in quarantine, but Flinch declined. He didn’t want to be too far away from his grandmother, so he stayed in the Playground on a foldaway cot. Mama Rosa was his only family, and knowing that she was sick kept him up half the night.
He wasn’t alone. Agent Brand drifted from one room of the Playground to another watching Heathcliff and studying the tests the science team had done on the virus. He looked worried and frustrated, but Flinch suspected he wanted to be left alone.
In the morning, Flinch got himself ready for school. Mama Rosa usually made a huge breakfast for the two of them, so it was strange to eat alone. With Ms. Dove’s “no junk food” policy, he decided to load up on sweets before his first class. Mama Rosa would never have allowed him to eat something called Not Really Sugar Smacks, let alone four boxes of it. By the time Flinch was finished with breakfast, he was so wound up, he thought he could see ghosts. But he knew he needed all that sugar to get through the day.
When he got to his first class, he was a sweaty, panting mess. Pushing aside his fears for his grandmother, he took out his books and paper and prepared to take notes. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a figure in the doorway. Ms. Dove’s eyes were glued on him. He gave her a sheepish smile, wanting her to believe he didn’t mind, but he hated being watched. He knew she would eventually see something she shouldn’t, and the team’s secret would be exposed. He had to find a way to distract her, but his mind was so jumbled with half possibilities that he couldn’t focus. The more he thought about it, the more nervous he grew until he was ready to scream. He squeezed his nose and waited for Brand’s voice.
“What is it, Agent?” the director asked. He sounded tired.
“The principal is staring at me,” Flinch whispered.
“That woman!” Brand growled. “Don’t let her shake you.”
“Please, everyone, would you pass your homework to the front of the class,” his teacher said.
Flinch froze.
“Homework!” he whispered. “I didn’t do my math homework. Aaack! I didn’t do any of my homework. Yesterday I was too busy saving my neighborhood from giant ball-stealing robots and grandmothers with h
omemade flamethrowers. I went to bed without eating dinner! I didn’t even eat dessert! I never do that!”
Suddenly, his teacher, Mr. Poole, leaned over him. “Who are you talking to, Julio?”
Flinch gulped. “No one, sir. Just taking some mental notes.”
“I see. The only thing I don’t see is your homework.”
Flinch tried to smile. “I didn’t get a chance to do it.”
“You didn’t get a chance to do it?” Mr. Poole turned to the class. “Did anyone else not get a chance to do their math homework?”
The room was silent.
“I see. I wonder why they found time to do it and you didn’t. It’s a mystery. Would you care to explain?”
In a panic, Flinch tried to explain, but he was so hyper it came out as nonsense. “I broke my face on a chili pot and there were monkey pirates invading from the sun!” Then he let out a strangled cry. “Aaarrggggheeeeeee!”
“Agent Flinch, you need to relax,” Brand’s voice said in his ear. “It’s obvious Ms. Dove is after you. She’s told your teacher to give you a hard time to try to get some kind of reaction out of you. Maybe she wants you to say something disrespectful or to make a scene in class so she can have another excuse to send you to detention. Don’t give her the satisfaction.” Flinch looked at the door again. Ms. Dove was hovering there, as if waiting for her turn to smack the piñata with a stick. Brand was right, but it didn’t make Flinch feel better. In fact, he felt on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
“I’m waiting, Mr. Escala!” Mr. Poole said.
“OK, kid, listen up,” Brand said. “I went to boarding school and I know how to handle teachers who spend all their time trying to embarrass you. Just repeat everything I say and say it as sincerely as you can.”
Flinch listened to everything Brand said, and he recited it word for word, as seriously as he could.
“There’s no mystery, Mr. Poole. I didn’t manage my time well last night because I was preoccupied with family issues. I realize that by not doing the assigned work I slow down an ambitious lesson plan and make it harder on my peers to learn. I apologize to you and everyone in class for my lack of commitment and vow that this will not happen again.”
Mr. Poole blinked hard as if he had just seen Bigfoot. His eyes were wide and his mouth seemed to be working out some kind of silent response. Flinch watched him struggle to make a sound. “Very well, Julio.”
Brand’s voice was in Flinch’s ear again. “If you talk to them with respect, they will do backflips for you. A teacher never expects an apology. It works every time.”
Flinch glanced back toward the door. Ms. Dove was still watching him.
When class was over, she followed him to the next one, and then the next, and then the next after that. In each class, Brand told him the right thing to say to the teacher to get him or her off his back. By the time lunch rolled around Flinch noticed that Ms. Dove was losing her smile. In fact, her face was curling up in a scowl fit for a hawk.
Flinch sat at his lonely cafeteria table picking at the chicken casserole surprise the lunch lady had prepared. Though Flinch had hoped the pilot had slipped in some candy corn as the “surprise,” there was nothing there when he got to the bottom of the bowl.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Flinch turned and saw a group of kids standing over him. They were the same four bullies who shoved him into his locker. He mentally prepared himself for a barrage of spitballs or an atomic wedgie. “Listen, guys—”
The boys grabbed some chairs from other tables, including a few that still had kids sitting in them, and sat down next to him, uninvited. A moment later they were all talking at once about a million different things, shouting over one another, and occasionally punching each other in the arm.
“So, that was pretty awesome how you threw us down the hallway,” the red-haired boy said. He had introduced himself as Wyatt.
“Yeah!” his buddy Jessie said, whistling with every word. “I’ve got a huge purple bruise.”
The short boy, who called himself Toad, lifted up the back of his shirt. “Me, too! Mine is shaped like Texas!”
“We’re going down to the train station to throw rocks at pigeons after school if you wanna come,” the chubby one said. His friends called him Hooper.
“You want me to come with you?” Flinch asked.
“Yeah,” Toad said.
“Um, didn’t you guys shove me in my locker the other day?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said.
“You realize that bullies don’t usually hang out with—”
“You think we’re bullies?!” Wyatt exclaimed.
All the boys shouted protests.
“We’re not bullies! We’re juvenile delinquents,” Toad croaked. His voice was much deeper than the others’.
“What’s the difference?” Flinch asked.
“There’s a world of difference!” Hooper cried. “A bully is a moron who has to pull down others to make himself feel big. A juvenile delinquent is an artist!”
“An artist?”
“Absolutely!” Jessie whistled. “We don’t paint or sculpt, but what we create is a masterpiece of havoc, whether it’s stuffing squeezable cheese into your socks or unscrewing the cap on the saltshaker in your favorite restaurant. We’re the Michelangelos of Mischief.”
“You guys are pulling all the school pranks?” Flinch asked. These boys must be the ones running Agent Brand ragged as a janitor. “Aren’t you guys afraid of getting caught?”
The boys roared with laughter. “We get caught all the time!” Toad said. “Why do you think we’re in detention? And in you, we see a kindred spirit—another artist, if you will.”
“Me?”
“You must have done something to get the principal on your case,” Wyatt said. “Hey! You’re not the kid that keeps stealing the letters off the movie theater sign, are you?”
Flinch shook his head.
“Whoever is doing that is an inspiration to juvenile delinquents everywhere,” Toad said.
Hooper laughed. “Last week there was a movie playing called Trouble in the Deep Water. He changed the sign to read The Turd in the Bowl.”
“Star Wars Festival turned into Fart Wars,” Toad said.
“Last month the sign advertised a movie called Eat Pray Fart!” Hooper exclaimed.
“It’s truly groundbreaking work,” Wyatt said. “He’s taking the juvenile delinquent world by storm!”
All of the boys laughed. Toad nearly fell out of his seat. Even Flinch laughed, right before he sneezed.
“Wow! You got some serious allergies, bro,” Wyatt said.
“We should record that and make it Ms. Dove’s voice mail message,” Hooper suggested.
“Flinch, I need you in the Playground on the double. We’ve got a problem,” Pufferfish told him through the com-link.
“So what do you say, dude? You hanging with us? Those rocks aren’t going to throw themselves,” Hooper said.
“Listen, thanks for the invite but I gotta go,” Flinch said as he stood up from the table.
“I told you the guy had a secret life!” Wyatt cried.
Flinch froze. How did Wyatt know? Had he seen him sneak into Locker 41? Had he spotted him running to school at superspeed? “Um—”
“You’re the one that keeps letting off stink bombs in Ms. Bailey’s class!”
“Yep—busted,” Flinch lied. It was best for the boys to think he was pulling pranks instead of wondering what he was doing when he disappeared.
“Dude, that’s classic!” Toad croaked.
The other boys all agreed that it was indeed “classic.”
“All right, dude,” Hooper said. “You go do your thing. We’ve got some serious pranks to pull before the end of the day, too.”
Wyatt opened up his backpack. Flinch saw it was stuffed tight with chocolate snack cakes. They were tubes of chocolate with cream filling called Ho Hos. Flinch had eaten a million of them in his day.
“What are
those for?”
“We’re dumping them in the girl’s bathroom toilets where they will magically be transformed into floating number twos. It’s going to be hilarious when the girls run out of the bathroom looking like they’re going to barf!”
“FLINCH. We need you now!” Pufferfish shouted loud enough to rattle Flinch’s brain.
“Well, have fun,” Flinch said before he left. As he hurried from the cafeteria, he looked back at the boys. What a strange world middle school was. No one was exactly who they seemed. Even the troublemakers had layers.
Moments later, Flinch leaped into Locker 41. When he reached the floor of the Playground, his team was waiting for him—or rather, what was left of it. Nearly fifty of the scientists were now locked away in quarantine.
“They’re all infected?” Flinch asked.
Brand nodded. “And there may be more, but right now we can’t be certain. The results from the first round of testing were corrupted, so we’re going to start over. But that’s not our biggest concern right now. Suit up. The School Bus is ready.”
“Where are we going?” Flinch asked.
“Pack your sunglasses, shaky,” Jackson said. “We’re going to Hollywood.”
Ten minutes later, the School Bus was breaking the Earth’s gravitational pull and making a U-turn to California. Flinch watched the red glow of the superheated ship’s hull out the window while chewing on his fingernails. The last couple of missions had all been technically successful, but they were also disastrous, and it was mostly his fault. He just hoped that Agent Brand would finally see that he shouldn’t be leading the team.
Ms. Holiday unstrapped herself from her seat. “Time for your mission. Benjamin, can you help me out with this one?”
“Of course,” the little blue orb chirped. Spinning like a top in midair, it projected a 360-degree image along the walls of the rocket. Flinch saw a hulking giant with two heads, four arms, and four legs standing nearly ten feet tall. It was stampeding down Hollywood Boulevard, kicking cars aside and terrorizing everyone it passed. Then the video changed to a news reporter standing on the side of the very same street. She gestured toward the creature that was rapidly approaching from behind her, but much to Flinch’s surprise, she didn’t seem at all concerned.