Brand shrugged and pushed it. He watched on the view screen as a battering ram swung down from the ceiling. It slammed into Ms. Dove and knocked her down the hallway. The giant egg fell to the floor and lay still, as did Ms. Dove.
Brand eased back into his chair and took a deep breath.
“Good job, boss,” Hooper said.
Brand rolled his eyes and then smiled. “You know, I’m starting to like middle school.”
ALL RIGHT, MY LITTLE ATHLETE! LET’S GET BACK TO YOUR GRUELING PHYSICAL FITNESS EXAM. I’VE GOT ANOTHER STUNT … I MEAN, EXERCISE FOR YOU TO ACCOMPLISH.
ONE HUNDRED SIT-UPS.
OF COURSE YOU WANT WASHBOARD ABS—WHAT KID WOULDN’T? WELL, THEY DON’T JUST HAPPEN. IF YOU WANT TO BE THE LEAN, ATTRACTIVE PERSON I AM THEN YOU CAN’T WISH FOR IT—YOU HAVE TO WORK FOR IT.
FIRST, LIE ON THE FLOOR AND PUT A BOOK ON YOUR BELLY. SECOND, SUPPORT YOUR NECK WITH A TOWEL TO PREVENT STRAIN. NEVER PULL ON YOUR NECK. THIRD, BEND YOUR KNEES. FOURTH, SIT UP AND FEEL THE BURN. BUT DON’T LET THE BOOK SLIP OFF YOU!
YEAH! THAT’S IT! NO PAIN, NO GAIN, I’M JUST GOING TO SIT OVER HERE AND EAT MY ICE-CREAM CONE AND WATCH. WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED, RUB YOUR BELLY ON THE SENSOR SO I CAN GAUGE HOW WELL YOU DID.
Flinch watched as Wyatt, Hooper, Jessie, and Toad raced around the Playground, fiddling with inventions and handling weapons they couldn’t possibly understand. Every once in a while there was a small explosion followed by a chorus of laughter. Brand looked like he was going to pull out his own hair.
“This place is awesome!” Wyatt said from somewhere in the science department. There was a crash and the sound of breaking glass. “Look at all this cool stuff!”
“Are you sure having them here is a good idea?” Flinch asked his boss.
“It’s a terrible idea,” Brand said. “But they’ve seen so much I can’t just let them go, and it’s too dangerous to have them running around in the school all by themselves. At least down here I can keep an eye on them.”
“So you come down here and save the world every day?” Jessie asked Flinch.
Flinch nodded. “They usually give us weekends off.”
“Hey, what does this do?” Toad shouted. Flinch turned to see the boy hoisting Mr. Miniature’s shrink ray over his head.
“Don’t touch that!” Brand cried, but he was too late. Toad zapped an entire section of desks, turning them dollhouse-size.
“Cool!” the other boys said as they rushed to his side.
“My turn!” Jessie shouted.
“No! I found it! It’s my shrink ray. Get your own,” Toad said, wrestling the weapon away from his friend’s grabby hands.
Flinch stepped in and took the ray gun from the boys. “You have to keep your hands to yourselves, guys,” he said. “Some of this stuff is pretty dangerous.”
“Duh!” Hooper said. “That’s why it’s so cool.”
“Could everyone just stop for a moment so I can hear myself think?” Brand shouted. “Benjamin, I need a report.”
The blue orb floated out of the mission desk. After a few clicks the dome’s screen came to life with a hundred different news channels, all reporting on chaos at every corner of the Earth.
“No way!” Wyatt said. “We’ve got to hook up a video game to this thing!”
Flinch tried to tune the boys out and watch the screen.
“It can now be confirmed that the epidemic has spread into the hundreds of millions. France, China, and Belgium have all declared a state of emergency. Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and Ireland have established martial law. All planes worldwide have been grounded. Trains are not running. Nearly every harbor on the globe is closed.”
“Dudes! There’s a giant head over here,” Jessie shouted. He had slipped out of the main room while everyone was watching Benjamin’s report. Before Flinch could do anything, all four of the boys were racing down the hall and through the door that led to the holding cell. By the time he caught up with them, they were hooting and hollering as they gaped at Heathcliff’s disturbing form.
“What is that thing?”
“It’s like a hot-air balloon with a face.”
“We have to take pictures!”
“Hey! This room is off-limits,” Dr. Kim said. She and a handful of the remaining healthy scientists were working feverishly around the boy, clearly hoping for some kind of last-minute breakthrough. “Director Brand, Ms. Holiday, you have to get these kids out of here.”
“We’re doing our best,” Ms. Holiday said. She and Brand each had a kid by the arm, but they were hard to move.
“They’re like a bunch of excited puppies.”
“Guys, you’ve got to go,” Flinch said. “That head is what is causing all the problems. You could get sick—”
“Sick?” Hooper asked. “Is that what’s going on? Everyone is sick?”
“Yes, now let’s go,” Brand said.
“Is it bacterial or viral?” Hooper asked, causing everyone to look at him in amazement. “What? Just ’cause I’m a troublemaker, I have to be dumb? My dad’s a doctor.”
“It’s like a virus, but it’s man-made,” Dr. Kim said.
“Nanobots!” Wyatt said, which caused another ripple of surprise. “I watch a lot of sci-fi movies. So … those things are real?”
Dr. Kim explained that the team called their technology nanobytes, and that these particular nanobytes were corrupt and were being controlled by the transmitter buried inside of Heathcliff’s brain. There was no way to shut the transmitter off without killing Heathcliff, and in his death throes he might send killing pulses out to everyone infected.
“That’s wild, man,” Jessie said. “So the world is screwed. Are you sure you’ve got nothing in this place that can stop it?”
“We’re out of good ideas,” Ms. Holiday said. “Unless you’ve got something brilliant to offer.”
“You know what would be cool?” Toad said. “If it were me, I’d take that shrink ray and make myself real tiny and then inject myself into the big head’s bloodstream. Then I’d go in and turn off the transmitter.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Jessie said.
There was stunned silence in the room for a long time.
“Who are you kids?” Brand asked, then he turned to the scientists. “Could that work?”
Dr. Kim shrugged. “Mr. Miniature managed to shrink people, and they seemed perfectly well when we got them back to their normal sizes. In this case, we’d have to shrink a person down to the microscopic level, but—”
“If they went in his body, they would suffocate immediately,” another scientist argued.
“Not if we shrunk an oxygen tank with them,” Dr. Kim said. “If we equipped this person with the right tools, it’s entirely plausible that he could reach the transmitter and shut it off without harming Heathcliff or anyone else.”
“Make it happen,” Brand said. “It’s the best idea we have.”
“Which, may I point out, was my idea. I’m, like, a genius,” Toad said. Then he lifted his leg and farted.
The other boys roared with laughter.
“Classic,” Flinch said, surrendering to the giggles himself. This only made the boys laugh harder.