by Jess Keating
“I promise,” Charlie said. “I’ll let you know when we’re home free.”
We watched with awe as Charlie squeezed her way under the mesh duct in the ceiling. Below her, Mary sat upright in a chair. Her hair was a bit frizzy and her shirt was creased and dirty, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. She wasn’t even tied up, which meant that Nolan was either incredibly stupid or the door to the room was locked from the inside. Everyone underestimated Mary.
I covered my dot and whispered to Grace, “What if they can’t get out?” I pointed to the door. “That’s got to be locked.”
Grace grinned. “Charlie’s our best escape artist. And that’s when she doesn’t have a ring to make her the size of a mouse. They’ll be fine.”
I hoped Grace was right. Charlie crept closer until she hung almost directly above Mary. She could drop right into her lap if she wanted to.
“Psst!” Charlie whispered.
“She’s going to scare the pants off Mary!” Mo giggled.
Mary looked up, and a burst of warmth shot through me. I wanted to reach out and hug her right there. Ever since joining Genius Academy, I’d been grateful to have her as a best friend. But it’s only when you lose someone that you really understand how important they are to you. Mary was like a sister to me. She was one of the big reasons I had a home now, with real friends.
“Who’s there?” Mary asked. She kept her voice low, leaning slowly and deliberately away from the overhead vent. She knew something was up.
Though I bet she’d never have guessed it was Charlie in mouse form, literally up above her.
“I’m turning the camera off now guys,” Charlie whispered. “I don’t want the light to get anyone’s attention.”
“Go get her, buddy.” Leo tightened his own jacket collar, like he was preparing to save Mary himself.
The last thing we saw was Mary’s wide, shocked face at the sight of a white mouse plummeting down on top of her out of nowhere.
You want to know the most annoying thing about far-fetched, intricate plans to invade villainous laboratories? It’s how many stinking obstacles you face, one right after another.
It’s beyond frustrating.
With Charlie taking care of Mary, the rest of us turned our attention to part three of our plan. Getting inside the window was easy enough—Charlie had seen to that by shifting the surveillance cameras out of range for us in her bird form. But what I wasn’t anticipating was the sheer number of hallways and rooms inside the compound, each crawling with scientists who might notice we didn’t belong here before we could find Nolan and his research.
“I know where we are,” Dad said, shifting on his feet. “This way!”
Grace, Leo, Mo, and I raced after him, doing our best to avoid making any noise on the shiny white floor. When we reached the end of a long hallway, Dad shoved a door open with his shoulder. “In here! Quick!”
I was hoping that Dad had led us straight to Nolan’s workspace, where we could find his ring prototype right away. But no such luck. Instead of a pristine lab space with computers, wires, and tools, we faced a bunch of brooms, mops, buckets, and soap bottles.
“A janitor’s closet?” I said. I nudged a grimy mop with the toe of my shoe. “Not exactly the high-tech environment I was picturing.”
“Nolan keeps his prototype in Lab A,” Dad explained. “But it’s a maze in here, and I thought you should get your bearings before we split up. Nikki, you and I need to go left, right, and then left to get to Lab A. Who’s next?”
“Pickles.” Leo glanced at me for approval before setting her on the floor. I was fairly certain we could rely on her to find Charlie and retrieve the ring for us, but my stomach still flip-flopped at the idea of setting her loose in such a dangerous place.
“Find Charlie,” I told her. I pulled one of Charlie’s old socks out of my pack. I had one for each member of the team—definitely the weirdest bag of laundry ever. When Pickles found Charlie and Mary, Charlie would use the same trick to send Pickles back to us with the ring.
Pickles sniffed the sock and seemed to understand.
“My turn,” Leo said. “Where are the data servers?” He patted his jacket pockets, which he’d stuffed full of explosive charges for his part of the plan: destroying Nolan’s research.
Dad closed his eyes, and the tops of his eyelids fluttered as he traced a map in his head. “Right, right, left, right. Room 442. Do you have that?”
Leo nodded. “I’ll keep in touch and let you know when the charges are set. Good luck, guys.” He gave my hand a quick squeeze before straightening up and slinking out the door with Pickles.
Grace peered out the tiny slit in the doorway to watch him. “He’s around the corner.” She relayed Leo’s movements so we could keep up. “Pickles took off. I think she’s heading in Charlie’s direction. Oh, shoot.”
A wave of dizziness swept over me as I pulled her out of the way to see for myself. “What is it?! Did they get caught?” The image of Leo being dragged away by one of these horrible scientists made me want to scream.
“Shh!” Grace said. She yanked me out of sight and eased the door closed quietly. “It’s the guards.”
“What about them?” Mo asked. “Need me to knock someone out?” He lifted his fists. I couldn’t help but giggle. Mo was all muscle and the size of a small fridge, but he was also about as physically harmless as a stuffed puffin named Schnookums.
Dad rubbed his temples with his fingers, frowning. “There shouldn’t be guards here,” he said. “Nolan must have changed his security layout. Are they on the left or right?” His mouth pinched into a tight line.
“There’s a security station on the left,” Grace said. “Sorry, Mike.”
“What?” I looked between them. “What does this mean?”
“It means our plan is dead in the water,” Grace said. She grimaced and shook her head angrily. “The guards are stationed right in our path. We need to go left to reach Nolan’s lab.”
“No.” Mo poked me in the shoulder, then turned to Grace. “We don’t. They do.” Taking hold of her elbow, he dragged her to the door.
“Mo!” I said. “What are you doing?! Stay in here!”
He cracked the door open and whispered, pointing to the hallway. “You’ll be able to navigate to Nolan’s room if you’re careful. But only if the security guards aren’t looking your way! Come on, Grace, we can give them cover.”
To my surprise, Grace didn’t argue. Instead, she lifted her hand to the air for a high five. “Excellent,” she said. “You want to do Waterworks or False Alarm?”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
Mo waved his hand at me dismissively. “Don’t worry, we got this. Let’s go with Waterworks. Better odds in this place.”
“Perfect,” Grace agreed. “Wait three minutes for us to get around the corner!”
Shoving the door open, Mo and Grace stumbled out of the janitor’s closet, while Dad and I stayed hidden in the darkness. They timed it perfectly. The guards turned around to find my friends standing in the middle of the hallway, as if they’d appeared out of nowhere.
“Hey!” One guard pointed at the two of them. “Who are you?”
Panic gripped me. How on earth would they talk their way out of this?
As it happened, their plan wasn’t to talk at all.
First Grace fell to the floor. Then Mo’s high-pitched screech pierced my eardrums as it echoed through the narrow hallway. He rushed toward the security guard sat a full sprint.
“Please!” he cried. I’d never heard him sound so distraught. “My cousin! We’re visiting my mom today—she’s a receptionist here—and she sent us to the break room to grab some juice! But she got hurt! Look at her wrist!”
Tears of panic streamed down Mo’s face as he made a show of picking up Grace’s red-splotched wrist—still angry-looking from the chemical burn—and flopping it around. “I don’t know what she touched, but it burned her and she passed out!”
Grace, amazingl
y, didn’t crack a smile or giggle at Mo’s antics. Instead, she let her head loll to the side while her arm flopped unceremoniously over her chest and Mo continued to shake her like a terrified teddy bear. For a moment, their acting was so good, I had to remind myself that Grace hadn’t actually fainted.
“She’s got low blood sugar, too!” Mo continued, panting with fear. He spoke at such a fast clip I could barely understand him. “I told her to have a cookie earlier, but she refused! She hates raisins, and I only had oatmeal raisin in my backpack! Oh, I should have known better! Why didn’t I think to bring chocolate chip?! What kind of a person only brings oatmeal raisin?! Mom is going to lose her mind!”
“Whoa, easy there, kid.” The guard panicked at the shrieking outburst. He leaned in to hiss a whisper at his colleague. “If these two somehow got into dangerous chemicals, we are toast. How could this happen?!”
He used his radio to call for assistance, but after a few more seconds of Mo’s panicked whining, he gave up and cursed under his breath. “I don’t know how you two got up here, but we’re going to find your mother right now, kid.”
He scooped Grace up in his arms.
Mo followed the two guards, wailing his way down the hallway. He even threw in a couple of phlegmy snorts and hiccups to sound extra hysterical.
“Wow,” Dad whispered. “That kid can act.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” I mused. “Even for a guy who can go all day without saying a word. I didn’t know he had it in him!”
“Okay, on to the next phase,” Dad said. “Are you ready to find Lab A and Nolan’s prototype?”
“No,” I admitted. I steeled my nerves and peeked out the doorway one last time. The guards were gone, and their empty chairs spun listlessly at the far end of the hallway to our left. “But that never stopped me before.”
For some reason, I always assume that stepping inside the laboratory of a genius-scientist-gone-bad will be a lot like entering a villain’s lair. I expect spooky music, maybe some ghost noises, sacrificial bones of fallen enemies, and all sorts of sharp objects. At the very least, I figure I’ll find a rat or two.
But Dr. Nolan’s laboratory wasn’t scary at all. In fact, it was downright beautiful, with millions of dollars’ worth of lab equipment, all sparkling with bright surfaces.
“Whoa!” I gaped in awe at the immaculate lab benches and full shelves. “It’s like a spaceship in here! How could you leave?!”
Dad gave me a look.
“Right,” I corrected myself. “Evil lab partner. Sorry.”
Dad approached a bank of drawers. “You see these blue buttons?” he asked. “Each button opens one of the metal doors so you can see what’s inside. Start pressing.” He hit the button in front of him and checked his watch as he was waiting for it to slowly grind open.
A quiet mumble sounded in my ear. Leo!
“Hey, guys?” He sounded rushed but still all in one piece.
“Leo,” I answered. “Mo and Grace can’t answer—they’re with the guards. But they’re okay! Are you?”
“Yes!” Leo panted. “The charges are set. And guess what—Pickles already made it back to me! The ring is safe in my pocket. I’m going to come meet you guys at Nolan’s laboratory, okay? I can help you look for his proto-type. As soon as we find it, we can get out of here and I’ll detonate my handiwork. I’m not risking any explosions while we’re still in the building!”
“Sweet guy,” Dad mumbled, still searching through stacks of equipment.
I envisioned Leo sneaking his way through a packed server room, surrounded by snaking wires and blinking computer lights. I shivered at the thrill of excitement. Every new mission put us in danger, but it was always such a relief when things went according to our plans. Leo had done his job. Pickles was safe. And that also meant Charlie and Mary were on their way out.
“Okay,” I said. “But be careful! Have you heard from Charlie yet?”
“I’m here!” Charlie spoke at full volume in my ear, causing me to wince at the sound.
“Ahh!” I reeled. “You’re going to deafen someone!”
“Sorry,” she said. The excitement in her voice was easy to read, even over the airwaves. “Mary and I are out of the building—and guess what! Martha is here! After we were out of range for so long, she found a GeckoDot at the Academy and tuned into my frequency. She flew here on the jet, and she’s getting ahold of the police for us! She can explain everything to them so your dad won’t be a target anymore, and get them to detain Nolan if he tries to leave! Everything’s comin’ up roses, I tell you!”
I beamed at Dad, who gave me a thumbs-up.
I mean, I know I’ve complained before about how unfair life is. But you know what? Sometimes, life hands you a win. Like when the vending machine gives you two chocolate bars instead of one. Maybe this night wasn’t doomed from the beginning? Just the thought of Martha taking charge outside the building made the muscles in my shoulders unknot a tiny bit. She would know exactly what to do.
“That’s amazing!” I said. “We’ll be out to meet you as soon as we get Nolan’s ring! Leo’s ready with the explosive charges, too.”
A weight on my chest lightened a tiny bit, knowing that no matter what happened next, Charlie and Mary had gotten out and would be safe.
I continued to scour each drawer with no luck. But the next button I pressed didn’t open a drawer to reveal an empty white box like each of the buttons before it. Instead, it shifted to reveal a dark silver cube, clearly containing something important.
“Dad!” I whispered. “I think I found it! But it looks like we’re going to need a password to get in.” I tapped the side of a small metallic number pad with my fingernail. “Tell me you know his code!”
A satisfied smile broke out across Dad’s face as he joined me. He punched in a seven-digit code, and the gears inside the cube began grinding under our hands.
“This has to be it.” I ducked nervously around his arm to check the door. So far, we were still undiscovered. The faces of the cube started to lift and fall apart like the bloom of a mechanical flower, revealing a small navy blue pedestal with an etched white panel on its side.
“Prototype A,” I read aloud. “But wait …”
My heart fell.
The cube had opened all right, but there was no ring staring back at us, just a small circular indentation on the pedestal where it would have been.
“It’s gone.” Dad rubbed his temples with both hands.
I bit my lip and pushed the drawer closed again, unwilling to look at its emptiness any longer.
Have you ever ridden a bike and been unable to steer because of a pothole in the road? There’s that moment when your balance goes haywire, your stomach jumps to your throat, you know you’re going to face-plant, and there’s nothing you can do but lean into the fall?
That’s what it felt like when we heard the man’s deep voice behind us.
“Michael Faraday. It’s been years, my friend.”
Dad and I whirled around. My hand instinctively reached for Dad’s arm. He slid forward to shield me.
Dr. Nolan looked nothing like I expected. He didn’t appear worn out or disheveled like Dad. In fact, he seemed chill. He had choppy black hair and intense eyes that scanned the room calmly like a wolf anticipating a hunt. He was very tall, and his long legs covered a lot of ground as he strode toward us. His tailored suit was unbuttoned at the neck, as though he’d been spending a late evening at work. The weirdest part was his smile—there wasn’t a hint of surprise or anxiety on his face. In fact, he had the look of someone who was eager. He’d been waiting for us. My hands began to tremble with dread.
“Nice of you to bring your kid here,” he said playfully. I couldn’t believe how relaxed he sounded, like he was speaking to an old buddy instead of an enemy who was currently trying to steal his billion-dollar invention. That meant either he was totally confident he had us or he was bananas.
Or maybe even both.
&
nbsp; He slid his dark eyes away from Dad and toward me. “Hello, Nikki.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Nolan made a face and held up his hand to shush me. He reached behind his back and calmly pulled out a small gun.
“You’d better tell those friends of yours to stay away.” Dr. Nolan kept his voice low, so nobody could hear him but us. He nudged the barrel of the gun higher in the air, aiming it directly at Dad’s chest. The faint sparkle of something silver on this thumb made my breath shrink down to ragged spasms.
He had the ring.
“No, please!” I whispered.
He lifted his eyebrows but didn’t say another word. I couldn’t decide if he was still smiling or just baring his teeth at me. I turned to Dad questioningly, and his tiny nod told me all I needed to know. We didn’t have a choice.
“Leo,” I whispered. “Leo, can you hear me?”
“I’m halfway to you!” he said. I could hear the gentle scuffle and slide of his sneakers on the clean floors. “Sit tight!”
“Don’t come,” I said, forcing my voice to be strong and clear. I had to squeeze my nails into my palm to get the words out. I wanted more than anything for Leo to come and help us—he was brave and smart, and that would mean Dad and I wouldn’t have to face Nolan alone. But I would never put any of my friends in danger if I could warn them to stay away instead.
Leo would do the same for me.
“Say that again?” Leo said. “Are you telling me not to come? Nikki, what is it?”
“Y-yes,” I sputtered. I swallowed down my fear and made myself stare at Dr. Nolan as I spoke, so he knew I was serious. I faked a happy, choked laugh. “Dad found the ring like he planned. It looks like Nolan has taken off already. He must have been one step ahead of us. Go meet Martha and the others outside. We’ll be there as soon as we can!”
“It’s true.” Dad confirmed my lie. I could tell by the way his fingers reached out to mine that he wanted to squeeze my hand in support. He understood why we had to do this alone: We wouldn’t risk the others for our fight. “We’ll be right behind you, Leo.”
