“Good! Then let’s get to work. We have a lot to do.”
By the time the Antagonist reached the Playground, Miss Information and the two remaining scientists had dragged Agent Brand, Dr. Kim, and Dr. Yerkey into a holding cell. Two containment suits were prepped and ready and the miniaturization ray had been adjusted and properly aimed.
“What’s all this, honey?” the Antagonist asked.
“A slight change in plans, darling,” Miss Information replied. “It seems the fifth member of the NERDS team has been shrunk and injected into this gigantic head.”
The Antagonist looked at his former employer. Despite the boy’s twisted features, he recognized Heathcliff immediately. Simon, Screwball, Brainstorm—whatever he called himself—the boy was responsible for his hook, and his white hair, and his blind eye. All of this boy’s foolish plots had blown up in his face over and over again, and the Antagonist had always suffered. By the looks of him, it appeared the imbecile had finally gotten what was coming to him.
“I’m confused,” he said.
“There’s no time to explain, sweetie pie, only to say that inside that head is the source of the villain virus and they’ve sent an agent in to destroy it. If we don’t want the entire world to suddenly get better, we need to stop him. Now get into your suit.”
She didn’t give him a chance to argue. He could be so stubborn, and worse, dim. She was his intellectual superior in every way, even if she knew he was laughing at her behind her back. Well, she had fooled him. She was running this show, even if she had led him to believe he was the one in charge. She needed his help for only a little while longer and then she would be in control of the world and he would be alligator food.
She got him into his containment suit and up the ladder to the tank before he knew what had hit him. Soon both of them were submerged in saline. Once they were settled, she tapped a button on her arm that remotely activated the ray gun. And then it was cold and dark.
Flinch was at the bottom of Heathcliff’s brain, waiting for someone to tell him what to do next. The onslaught of nanobytes had slowed, but he was still fighting them, and worse, a quick look at the timer inside his helmet told him that he had precious minutes left to finish his mission. He called out to Brand and Dr. Kim, but it was as if he had been abandoned. And then it hit him. Maybe the whole team had succumbed to the virus. Maybe he was all alone.
“Dude? Dude? Are you still there?”
“Hooper?”
“Yo! You’re still alive. Bro, you won’t believe what happened! The librarian clocked the janitor and he’s knocked out. She did the same to the scientist lady, and then she took over the base. She let some weird dude in here with a mask and they got into containment suits and shrank themselves. They’re coming after you, man. They’re going to try and stop you.”
“So who is left up there?” Flinch cried.
“Just us,” Hooper said. “We hid.”
“‘Us’?”
“Your friendly neighborhood juvenile delinquents.”
The panic hit Flinch like a slap in the face. He was a tiny, microscopic secret agent trying to save the world inside the body of a monster … and his support team consisted of four kids whose sole goal in life was to clog up toilets.
“It’s all going to work, big guy,” Toad said. “We’re going to help. Hooper’s a doctor.”
“My dad is a doctor, Toad. Not me.”
“What happened to Benjamin?”
“The librarian put a whammy on it,” Wyatt said. “It’s on the floor, popping and hissing.”
“So you’re all I’ve got,” Flinch stated.
“We are your loyal soldiers. Lead us, O great one,” Jessie said.
“Lead you! I can’t lead you. I’m the spaz.”
“The leader of the weirdos,” Toad croaked.
Flinch couldn’t help smiling. Yes, he was the leader of the weirdos, and somehow that calmed his nerves. “OK, someone needs to find a picture of a brain. Dr. Kim was mapping one, so it should be there.”
“It’s on the screen right in front of us,” Wyatt said.
“Good. Do you see a flashing dot inside it?”
“I see two!” Jessie said through his whistling nose.
“Good, one of them is me. I’m at the base of the brain.”
“We’ve got you,” Wyatt said.
“And the other beeping dot is the transmitter. I need to get to it, but I can’t just cut my way through. I could kill Heathcliff. So we need to find a path that isn’t going to hurt him.”
“Piece of cake, bro!” Wyatt said. “Looks like right now you’re hanging out on the spinal cord, and directly overhead is the cerebellum. What it does I have no idea, but it’s on the map and it’s in the way. So just push on through.”
“No way, man!” Hooper cried. “The cerebellum is the part of the brain that affects balance and muscle coordination. You screw that up and this head will never walk again.”
“It doesn’t walk now,” Toad pointed out.
“Please, guys, stop arguing. I need to hurry. I only have twelve minutes left before I’m back to normal size.”
“Hey, don’t freak,” Jessie said. “You can climb up the cerebellum and reach the brain at the top.”
Flinch did as he was told, activating the jet boosters to fly to the bottom of the brain.
“Awesome,” Hooper said. “Now you’re at a part called the occipital lobe. The chart says this part affects vision and, to a lesser degree, recognition of letters and numbers. So you gotta ask yourself: ‘Fate of the world, or a head that can’t sing the alphabet song?’”
Flinch cringed but used his laser to cut a small hole big enough for him to enter the brain. “I hate this,” he cried as he entered. “What if I just made this guy into an idiot?”
“Reading is pretty overrated, dude,” Toad said.
Once at the top of the brain, Flinch saw an amazing sight: a lightning display of little green electrical impulses and chemicals swirling from one place to another. He floated over it using his boosters.
“Bro, you are doing great. You’re out of the occipital lobe and approaching the temporal lobe,” Hooper told him. “The chart says it handles the memory of faces, as well as emotions and language.”
“Poke it and see if Heathcliff will suddenly start speaking Italian!” Wyatt said.
“I’m not poking it,” Flinch grumbled. “How much farther do I have to go?”
“Halfway there, buddy,” Hooper said. “You’re headed toward the frontal lobe, which deals with creative thinking and impulse control. The transmitter is buried there, right near the surface.”
Flinch kept moving through the gray mass until in the distance he could see a little red pulsing box.
“I see it,” Flinch said.
“Awesome possum,” Jessie said. “Uh-oh.”
“What’s ‘Uh-oh’?” Flinch cried. “You don’t get to say ‘Uh-oh.’ Only I get to ‘Uh-oh’!”
“There are two more little dots moving in your direction and they’re coming in fast. It’s got to be the librarian and her creepy boyfriend.”
Before Flinch could ask “How close?” the two figures were on him. The bigger of the two villains punched him in the chest, and even with the suit’s deflector force field, it hurt. It also knocked him backward. When he righted himself, he could feel his pack growing lighter. The Antagonist had caused a rupture, and Flinch’s fruit punch supply was seeping out. In desperation he drank as much as he could before it was completely gone.
The second figure reached down and grabbed the transmitter. He couldn’t see her face, but there was something about the way she moved. He knew it was Ms. Holiday.
“Julio, you blew it,” she said, proving his suspicions. Her voice wasn’t sweet like always. Now it was filled with a wicked glee. “I guess that’s what happens when you send the freak.”