He turned the knob on his harness all the way to its lowest setting, stopping it from regulating the sugar in his body. At Level Zero he was all hyper and all power without any of the pesky control. She may have called him a freak, but she hadn’t seen anything yet.
The next few minutes were a blur to Flinch. He knew there was a lot of jumping and running and bouncing and tossing. His voice may have sounded like a cartoon duck’s. He also remembered the look of dread on Pufferfish’s face when he raced around her like a hyperactive hurricane.
“What are you doing?” she cried over the wind he stirred up.
“I don’t have the faintest idea!” he shouted, zipping around and around her at top speed. The mini-twister lifted the poor girl off the ground, blinded her eyes with trash and dirt, and sucked all the oxygen from her lungs. A moment later she was unconscious. He eased his speed and caught her falling body, then held his ear to her chest. She was breathing.
He pinched his nose. “Boss, they’re all sick,” he said.
“I know, Flinch,” Agent Brand said. “Bring them home.”
The Antagonist was convinced that his first date with his new girlfriend was ruined. First, he burned dinner. Second, he forgot to get flowers. Third, he was attacked by ninjas who fought so hard and long that the pint of ice cream he had brought home for dessert melted in the bag.
But Miss Information didn’t seem to mind. All she wanted to do was cuddle on the couch and watch television. The news was filled with fires, chaos, and mass destruction—all caused by the villain virus. The Antagonist was pretty sure he had met his soul mate. They munched on popcorn and witnessed the sorrow of others, relishing the horrors that threatened every block.
“Look, sweetie pie, there’s a mall in Minneapolis encased in a block of ice,” Miss Information said. “Your plan is working perfectly.”
The Antagonist grinned. “Of course it is. I’m a genius.”
“My honey bun is so diabolical.”
He blushed beneath his mask.
“I have some good news for you,” she continued. “The NERDS are incapacitated.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Honey, I’m not just a pretty face hidden behind a mask with a skull painted on it,” she said. “I know everything.”
“So they are no longer a threat,” he said proudly. “I accomplished something that my boss never could. I knew he should have put me in charge.”
“And now the next part of your plan can begin,” she said.
“Yes,” he said quietly. What was the next part of the plan again?
“Invading their headquarters!”
“Oh, yes, invading the headquarters! We need to do that right away.”
“Imagine the amount of technology you will have access to then,” Miss Information said. “I’ll be—I mean, you will be unstoppable.”
The Antagonist grinned. How lucky this woman was to have a boyfriend as smart as him. Of course, he had no idea where the headquarters was, but he was sure that his brilliant mind would figure it out at any moment. He recalled invading their old headquarters in the depths of an elementary school, but he knew that space had been abandoned. Where could they have gone? His subconscious was probably putting together the details he had unknowingly already collected and would reveal it to him soon.
“They’re at the middle school,” Miss Information told him.
“Like I suspected,” he cried, even though he hadn’t suspected it. But that was just a tiny detail now. “Sometimes, my flower, I think you are as diabolically intelligent as I am.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. “Now you can crush once and for all the last obstacle between you and world domination. Apparently, there’s only one active agent left and just a handful of adults in supporting roles, and most of them are scientists so they probably have the combined strength of a baby bunny. The director walks with a cane, and there’s a librarian, but what is she going to do? Throw a book at us?”
“The pilot, the one that wears a smock—we have to worry about him,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of time before he’s sick, too, darling,” she purred. “Soon, they will all be overcome with evil and your empire will be unstoppable.”
The Antagonist smiled beneath his mask. The sound of having an unstoppable evil empire and being at the height of his career sounded awfully good. But wait: Wasn’t there something he was supposed to be worried about when he became the most powerful villain in the world? Wasn’t it something she had said to him?
Just then the doorbell rang.
“That must be the Chinese food,” Miss Information said. “I hope they put in extra packets of duck sauce.”
“If they didn’t, I will strap the delivery boy to a rocket and shoot it into space,” he said.
“Darling, you make me feel like a princess,” Miss Information said.
The Antagonist opened the door. There he found a young man holding a sack of food.
“Did you order the chicken lo mein?” the deliveryman asked.
The Antagonist nodded and took the sack. He opened it and took a peek.
“Honey, I’ve got bad news—no duck sauce,” he said.
Miss Information growled. “I’ll go fuel up the rocket.”
The Playground was in disarray. Only fifteen scientists remained from the fifty who had been well that morning. The survivors looked exhausted. Brand guessed they were working around the clock. They were still experimenting on Heathcliff’s nanobytes, and tables had been moved aside to make space for the various ray guns and doomsday devices the team had seized from the villains.
The lunch lady had returned to the Playground in a pair of his own handcuffs. “I feel the fever, boss,” he admitted. “I knew if I waited, I would cause you trouble. Put me in a cell and keep working.”
With his team and the entire world falling apart, Brand could do nothing but stand on the catwalk above Heathcliff’s head and look down at the source of all the world’s misery. He and the sleeping head were all alone. The remaining staff were busy working on a cure. All of the systems that kept the boy unconscious were running automatically, but soon they would run out of sedatives. When the boy woke up … well, things were going to get much, much worse. Brand wondered if General Savage was right. Should they have tried to remove the transmitter from Heathcliff’s brain? Was it right to let the world go down the drain for one person? No, that was a decision he was still not prepared to make. He shoved the thought aside.
Benjamin zipped into the room. “Sir, may I be of some assistance?”
Brand sighed. “Not unless you can save the world.”
“I’m afraid I’m only a superintelligent, flying computer, sir. Not a miracle worker,” Benjamin said. He paused, then continued, “I’ve received word from the school’s administrative office about Julio. Apparently, Agent Flinch is being expelled.”
Twenty minutes later, Agent Brand met Flinch in the hallway outside of Principal Dove’s office. He seemed more agitated than usual.
“So this is really happening?” Flinch said. “I’m not having some sort of mental breakdown? I’m a secret agent and have superpowers, and they’re tossing me out of school!”
“Flinch, please relax,” Brand said.
“Relax?” he cried. “How am I supposed to relax?”
Brand turned the knob on Flinch’s harness, which seemed to calm the boy. “I assure you that you are not going to be expelled,” he said, pinching his nose for the com-link. “Ms. Holiday, this is my fifth attempt to reach you. I need your assistance with the principal.”