Once the Hyena came to her senses, she attempted to chase after them, but her feet held fast to the floor. In fact, she couldn’t move a pinky toe in any direction. The stuff the fat kid had squirted on her was some kind of super-powerful glue.
“What should we do?” one of the goons asked.
“Um, you could go after them,” the Hyena suggested sarcastically.
A moment later the goons were piling out through the lab door and she was struggling with her boots.
“Not again!” the Hyena muttered as she reached down to unzip them. She slid her feet out and gave her boots a strong tug. It did no good. The weird kid’s glue was like concrete. Another six hundred dollars down the drain!
Furious, she turned and raced barefoot into the hallway. The kid and the scientist were nowhere in sight, but another boy had appeared in front of her. This one, unlike the sticky weirdo, was cute, though he had a set of braces that appeared to be made from battleship scraps.
“Give up,” the boy said. “We’ve got her now.”
The Hyena frowned. “My boss doesn’t pay for me to give up.”
She was about to push past him when something crazy happened. The boy opened his mouth and strands of his braces sprang out, formed a giant hand, and latched onto her arm. She tried to pull away, but the braces wouldn’t allow it.
“Let me go, you carnival reject,” she demanded.
“Not until you call off your goons,” the boy said.
The Hyena had had enough. Cute or not, this boy was in her way. Her arms weren’t free, but her feet were. She aimed a kick at the boy’s chin. His weird braces loosened their grip, and the Hyena slipped out and raced for the stairs.
Unfortunately, when she got downstairs to the street, she found her so-called crack team of mercenaries getting their butts handed to them by another eleven-year-old boy. He was dressed in a weird harness and was tossing the goons around like rag dolls. He was scrawny, but had unbelievable strength. She watched him punch one of her goons, a man three times his size, sending him tumbling thirty yards down the street. But he wasn’t the only obstacle. Flying above them was an Asian girl—were those inhalers in her hands?—who kept buzzing by the goons, distracting them. Then there was another boy with bright red hair and the biggest set of front teeth she had ever seen on a human being. She couldn’t be sure how he was doing it, but he had somehow convinced half of her team to turn on itself. Soon the goons were in the midst of an all-out brawl. The Hyena raced into the melee, dodging flying fists and angry elbows. The sticky boy and the scientist were weaving through the crowd ahead of the Hyena, but her agility and speed would allow her to catch up to them fast. She was within hands’ reach of her prey when the boy with braces materialized again.
“You’ve got my scientist,” the Hyena said to him.
“Sorry, finders keepers,” he replied as four long metallic arms crept out of his mouth, planted themselves on the ground, and lifted him up like a spider.
“OK, that’s cool in a very disgusting kind of way, but I recommend you move,” she said.
“Can’t do that,” the boy said.
“Your mistake,” she said as she leaped into the air. She planted her hands on his shoulders and used him as a springboard to flip herself over his body. She kicked him in the back of the head in the process. He fell hard on his face, but she didn’t stick around to see if he was hurt. Glue boy and the scientist were climbing aboard a camel and racing off down a back alley. She’d never catch them on foot. Spotting another camel nearby, she climbed into its saddle, took the reins, and dug her heels into the animal’s ribs. It roared and took off like a rocket.
The Hyena had ridden many horses in her day; equestrian talents were a major plus in the world of beauty pageants. But a camel is only similar to a horse in that it has hair and four legs. Riding a horse is like floating on smooth waves. Riding a camel is like riding a barrel over a waterfalclass="underline" bouncy, uncomfortable, and, factoring in camel saliva, very wet. Still, the Hyena would rather face camel spit than go back to Jigsaw empty-handed. She was not going into the fire pit like Dr. Lunich!
They raced down back alleys, weaving through hidden neighborhoods and causing panicked people to leap out of their way. An old woman tossed a pail of brown water out of her window right on the Hyena’s head. A man dragged a cart with a broken wheel across her path. After much shouting, she got around him and continued her pursuit. Her target made a left turn onto a long stretch of lonely road that crossed over an empty riverbed. The Hyena dug her heels into the camel again and soon the distance between her and the sticky boy had shortened.
She was seconds away when the odd boy with the mechanical mouth came stomping past her. He sidled up to the chubby boy, then a fifth limb crept out of his mouth and pulled Dr. Badawi away from Glueboy. Glueboy shouted angrily at Metalmouth, but in the process, he fell off his camel and tumbled end over end down the embankment to the dry riverbed below. Metalmouth, however, just kept running. If he noticed that his companion had taken a nosedive into the dust, he didn’t seem concerned.
The Hyena raced after him, but his machine legs outpaced the camel two steps to one, and in no time he was out of the city proper and into the hot, brutal desert. As he slipped farther and farther away, the Hyena began to feel Dr. Jigsaw’s trap door sliding out from under her. She was nearly resigned to a fiery death when a miracle occurred. As she chased the boy up a sandy embankment, she saw an army of men on horseback approach. Each was brandishing a huge sword and screaming angry threats into the air. The men surrounded them all.
The leader of the militia pointed his sword at the boy’s neck and shouted angrily.
“Friends of yours?” the Hyena asked him.
“A few of them had me surrounded this afternoon. I think he’s still angry about the beating I gave him,” the boy replied.
“You’ve disgraced his manhood,” she said. “You should apologize before he chops off your head.”
“I don’t speak Arabic,” the boy said.
“I do,” the Hyena said. “Give me the doctor and I’ll get you out of this.”
The boy frowned, but a moment later his tentacles were easing the poor doctor onto the back of the Hyena’s camel.
“Thanks,” she said, as she turned the camel in the opposite direction.
“Hey! I thought you were going to help me!”
“Yeah, about that. I don’t really speak their language. But good luck,” she said, then clomped off into the night. She heard an enormous roar from the crowd and the sound of swords clanging.
“I’M sensing that you’re angry,” Jackson said as Agent Brand paced back and forth. The spy said nothing. Neither did the scientists hovering about in the Playground. Jackson had never heard headquarters so still.
“I think it’s clear that he’s not cut out for this,” Ruby said before Brand could answer.
Flinch turned the knob on his harness. “He really blew it.”
Jackson was livid. “What did you think—I was going to be some superspy right out of the box?”
“What I thought was you could follow simple orders!” Agent Brand shouted. His words were so loud, Ms. Holiday yelped. “I told you to observe, not get involved.”
“The team needed my help!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Heathcliff muttered. “We had the situation under control. We’ve faced bigger problems than a dozen armed goons.”
“Heathcliff is right,” Brand said. “Your teammates are more than capable. You, however, are not. You are responsible for Dr. Badawi’s kidnapping.”