Age of Heroes: The Witch Hunter's Gauntlet

by Bret Schulte

  “Tired of smooshing poor innocent turtles and storming the castle to rescue the princess?” Zoey asked playfully.

  “You haven’t played a video game in a while have you?” Lucas asked in an accusatory tone.

  “I don’t really have the time. Oh-” Zoey yelled angrily as she jumped out of her seat, rubbing her shin. “What was that?”

  A two-foot tall robot with outstretched Frankenstein-style arms and tank-tread wheels rolled out from under the table.

  “Feed me,” the robot said in a creepy buzzy robot voice.

  “Hey Esteban,” Natch said.

  “Hey Natch,” the robot buzzed.

  “What is that?” Zoey asked. She seemed more curious than angry now.

  The small camera mounted where the robot’s head should be swiveled to look at her.

  “Hello Zoey Dalal, my name is Esteban Ruiz. Pleased to meet you.” The robot tipped forward slightly as if bowing. “Sorry for bumping into you.”

  “Uh, hello, Esteban,” she said examining the camera closely. “That is quite all right.”

  “You two have a nice chat. I’ll be right back,” Natch said as he got up and headed back to the buffet line.

  Zoey squatted down to have a better look at the robot. She poked at the robot’s left arm. Sam zoned out when Zoey started asking very technical-sounding questions about how the robot was built.

  “Ah, young love,” Lucas said sarcastically. “When girl meets robot.”

  Sam couldn’t help but laugh at that.

  “Do you know this Esteban fellow?” Sam asked in her mock-concerned-mom voice. “Is he a fine upstanding young gentleman?”

  “Sort of,” Lucas answered seriously. “He lives on my floor, but he has never come out of his room as far as I know.”

  “Never?”

  “Nope.”

  “So you’ve never seen him?”

  “Correct.”

  “I wonder how he goes to the bathroom,” Jerry said, annoyingly interrupting Sam and Lucas’ fun back and forth.

  “We are eating here, man,” Lucas said to Jerry as he carelessly tossed his fork down on the table in annoyance.

  “Sorry,” Jerry said sheepishly and went back to eating his pudding.

  But something had just occurred to Sam.

  “So if he doesn’t ever leave his room, he must not go to classes.”

  “Right,” Lucas said.

  “So how does he know Zoey?”

  Lucas put both of his hands up to cover the sides of his mouth.

  “He knows everyone,” he said quietly. “He’s a computer nerd. He hacked into the school’s systems and read everyone’s files. And he’s tapped into all the cameras.”

  “That’s creepy and probably illegal,” she said. “And he can read lips?”

  “We don’t know. But why risk it?”

  She put her hands up to her mouth just like Lucas. “How do you know he’s done all this?”

  “Natch,” Lucas said with a nod of his head. “He’s been using Esteban to look up information on everyone. And he bribed him to not tell me his real name.”

  “Wow, major paranoia,” she said. “But he knows everything that’s in our files?”

  “That is correct, Samantha Diane Hathaway of Presley, Illinois, daughter of Drs. Samuel and Joanne Hathaway, born April 1, in Menlo Park, New Jersey,” Lucas said with a sly look.

  “That is so creepy,” she blurted out. “What else do you know about me?”

  “Nothing, really,” he said defensively.

  She could tell from his face that he knew he had done something wrong, not just that he had said something wrong, but that he had actually done something so stalkerishly creepy that she might jump up from the table and never talk to him again. But in reality she was wondering exactly what her file said. It could have useful information on her parents or the stupid Lantern of the Blue Flame that everyone wanted so badly.

  “Uh, listen,” Lucas said hurriedly. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know to make us even. My middle name is Horatio. I don’t know how to swim. Uh, I’m from Riverside, Iowa. When I was eight I took all the clothes off of my sister’s Barbie doll because I was curious. I-“

  “It’s okay,” Sam said, cutting him off. “Well, maybe not the Barbie part, that is kind of sad. But I’m not mad.”

  He let out a long breath and slumped back into his seat, more relieved than anyone she had ever seen.

  “Do you think I could get a copy of this file?” she asked.

  The relief drained from his face to be replaced with suspicion.

  “Why? Don’t you already know everything about you?” he asked.

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you? Not that there is much to know,” she said as nonchalantly as she could.

  “Oh, I’m sure there are a lot of interesting things to know about you,” he said casting his eyes down on the table.

  Did he know more than he was letting on? Or was he just trying to be nice? Sam couldn’t tell. She needed to see what was in her file.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said, attempting to change the subject for now. “I really can’t compete with the video game champion of the universe.”

  Lucas actually blushed.

  “I am never going to live that down am I?”

  “Never. Besides, it probably made you the coolest guy in Riverside, Iowa.”

  “First off, Riverside is too small to be the home of anyone that anyone else would think is cool. Secondly, I think you are the first person to include me and cool in the same sentence.” He had such a dopey smile on his face.

  “Hey, you guys should really check this out,” Zoey said. She had taken the front panel off of her little robot friend and was examining the wires and gears inside.

  “Ah, naked robot,” Lucas said, covering his eyes.

  Jerry snorted just as he put a spoonful of pudding in his mouth. A good deal of it oozed out the corners. He reached for a wad of napkins to wipe it off.

  “Well, that’s disgusting,” Natch said as he returned with a loaded tray of food that smelled five times better than the food they had been eating.

  “What is that?” Sam asked.

  “Coriander and pepper-crusted Yellowfin Tuna over Nicoise salad,” Natch said with just a touch of snootiness.

  “Where did you find that?” Lucas asked, looking sadly at the remains of his cheeseburger.

  “I have my sources.” Natch sat the tray down on the robot’s outstretched arms.

  He put the front panel back on the robot, which earned him a sulking pout from Zoey.

  “Your little friend has to go now,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Zoey,” the robot buzzed.

  “Goodbye, robot,” she said, patting the robot on the camera that served as its head.

  The little robot weaved its way through the cafeteria. Most people were happy to get out of the way, but one athletic-looking boy stole the apple off the tray. The robot’s head camera turned and looked at the boy for a moment before rolling on. Sam looked up at the security cameras on the ceiling again and could have sworn she saw one turn ever so slightly to watch the boy head back to his table.

  “Oh, he is going to pay for that,” Lucas said.

  “What do you think Esteban will do to him?” Sam asked. There was no telling how much damage a master hacker could do to a person’s life.

  “Who knows, maybe he’ll just change his grades or something,” Lucas said.

  “Or he could add his name to the FBI’s Most Wanted list,” Natch said happily.

  “That is horrible.”

  Natch just shrugged and opened his can of Mountain Dew.

  “No, this is horrible.”

  Natch stood up and poured the can of soda on Sam’s head.

  “NO, I WILL NOT GO OUT WITH YOU, YOU LOSER,” he yelled at the top of his lungs as he shook the last drops of soda onto her head.

  She sat there dripping for several moments in complete and utter shock. She was too
surprised to even yell at him. Slowly the world around her began to filter into her brain.

  The entire cafeteria was laughing and pointing at her. Lucas was cussing Natch out, and Zoey threw her unopened pint of chocolate milk at him. For his part Natch was having a ball, doing a little victory dance for the crowd as he walked over to Tiffany and Zack’s table, where he was met with a round of applause. The only person who seemed unfazed was Jerry, who just watched the whole scene with a silent wide-eyed stare.

  “I can’t believe he did that,” Zoey said angrily. She stole the unopened milk off of Natch’s tray to replace the one she had just thrown.

  “I can,” Lucas said glumly. “He’s all power crazy. He’s just trying to suck up to the popular people.”

  Sam took another look at Natch and his new friends. The only person not laughing was Tiffany, who kept eyeing Natch suspiciously. Sam thought for sure Tiffany would order her followers to pounce on him at any second, but after a few exchanges with Zack, she nodded her head and waved for Natch to sit down.

  “I can’t believe she let him in,” Sam said.

  “He’s a jerk. They are jerks. They have a lot in common.” Zoey said succinctly.

  Sam was very inclined to agree--about the jerk part, anyway.

  “Wow. That was harsh. Please tell me you got all that.” Sick and Wrong approached the table. Wrong had his video camera trained on Sam. He gave Sick a thumbs-up sign.

  “Are you guys ever not filming?” Lucas asked.

  “Professor Ramirez, the faculty advisor to MGTV, suggested that if we could prove we could cover a news story like the Student Body President election we might be able to get our own show. But then we stumbled across this story-“

  He was cut off by a roar of laughter from Tiffany’s table.

  Zack was doing a pantomime routine that looked a lot like Sam falling in the puddle. Sam was glad she couldn’t hear what anyone at that table was saying. Sick snapped his fingers and motioned for Wrong to film Zack’s act.

  “Get out of here, you vultures,” Tasha commanded.

  Tasha appeared out of nowhere with her traditional lunchtime snack: a gigantic 120-ounce cup of soda. If Sam had to get up for gymnastics practice at four in the morning, she would be a caffeine junky too.

  “Shoo. Go.”

  Sick and Wrong exchanged a fearful look and scurried off to film Tiffany’s table.

  “I am so sorry,” Lucas said, reaching across the table to hand Sam his napkin. “I am so going to chew him out back in our room.”

  “It’s fine. I guess,” Sam said doing her best to blot the Mountain Dew out of her hair.

  Just then the bell rang.

  “Come on,” Tasha said placing her hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We should get there early so you can wash up.”

  “That’s right you want to be all squeaky-clean for your beat-down next period.” Zack had snuck up behind her.

  She fought back the urge to punch him in his big gloating face.

  “Speaking of beat-downs,” Lucas chimed in. “I hope you’ve been practicing Hyper-Urban Assault. I’d at least like some sort of a challenge.”

  “Don’t worry about that, my new friend Natch told me all about those cheat codes of yours. I think our next match will be a bit more fair.” Zack flashed his trademark smile and walked away in triumph.

  Zoey spun in her chair to face Lucas. “You cheat!”

  “No,” Lucas said offended. “Never. Well, not in a real game. Never against Zack.”

  “Uh-huh,” Zoey said playfully.

  “I am going to kill Natch,” Lucas said sitting back and crossing his arms, his eyes squinting a bit.

  “Maybe we’ll do it for you,” Tasha flexed her fingers menacingly.

  “He is in our gym class next period,” Sam explained. The problem was that Zack was also in their gym class. Never mind the fact that it seemed patently unfair to put freshmen and sophomores in the same gym class; it was just torture to put Sam and her super-well-trained competitive cousin in the same class.

  Tasha rubbed her hands together. “This is going to be sweet.”

  Sam wasn’t so sure. Zack spent every single gym class purposely hitting whichever type of ball they were playing with at her because he knew she couldn’t catch or hit it back. Even when they were on the same team, he would pass her the basketball just so she could miss the shot or have it stolen from her. The only thing that saved her from complete embarrassment was that Natch nearly always stopped a game in the middle by contesting that he successfully stole first base or that he was not going to run track because he was not going to run around in circles just because a fat man with a whistle told him to.

  Sam had never looked forward to a gym class less in her life, which was really saying something.

  Chapter 9

  Gym Class in Wartime

  The one small upside to gym class was that it gave Sam the chance to quickly wash the Mountain Dew out of her hair before class started. Of course, that meant that she was stuck with wet hair for the rest of the day and that she would frizz out like crazy. But she didn’t smell like stale soda and puddle water anymore, so that was a plus.

  “To those who are about to die, we salute you,” Tasha said. If that was supposed to be reassuring or inspiring Sam didn’t see how.

  The Roundhouse was a decent-sized gym with enough room for a basketball court, a weight room, a number of racquetball courts, a martial arts dojo, a dance studio, a climbing wall, and multi-purpose areas currently set up for volleyball and cheer squad rehearsals as well as a room with wall-to-wall floor mats for gymnastics practice. The whole area was surrounded with a six-lane track and enclosed under a multicolored glass dome.

  Sam couldn’t decide what she thought of Coach Powers as easily as she could her other teachers. He seemed generally nice, but he was even more of a gung ho sports nut than her old gym teacher, Coach Walters. But unlike Coach Walters, it turned out Coach Powers had been a football star, a fact that he managed to work into nearly every speech. He played a few years at Notre Dame and was on his way to the NFL until he suffered some sort of injury that ruined his career.

  The only real problem she had with Coach Powers was that he was too dedicated to his job. Coach Walters had been a jerk, but it usually worked out in Sam’s favor. Coach Walters turned his gym class into thinly veiled extra practice times for the baseball, basketball, and football teams and had little interest in everyone else, so most of the time Sam was allowed to spend gym class just walking the track. Coach Powers made sure everyone was participating in class, whether they wanted to be or not.

  “’Are you ready for your beat-down?’” Tasha asked in her best Zack impression.

  Sam was incredibly grateful that Tasha found all of this funny. Tasha was easily one of the best athletes in the class; they almost always wound up on the same team, and they hardly ever won. It really wasn’t fair to her.

  They lined up with the other students and waited for Coach Powers to arrive. Zack and Natch were getting along like old friends.

  “Figured out how to weenie your way out of playing today yet, Natch?” Tasha yelled at them.

  The smile instantly vanished from Natch’s face as the rest of the class laughed and nodded.

  “Calm down, calm down,” Coach Powers said as he strode across the gym floor. He had a netted bag of red balls over his shoulder.

  Sam’s heart skipped a beat.

  “All right class, thanks to the rain and the cold we will be having gym class inside today. You’re rather lucky; this is about the only school left in California where you can still play…,” he paused for dramatic effect as he pulled one of the red balls out of the bag. “Dodgeball.”

  Apparently a huge smile had sprung up on her face because people were looking at her like she was deranged. She did her best to suppress it.

  “All right. Blue team, you have the north side; gold team, you get the south.”

  Their gym shirts were reversible, with one side bein
g blue and the other gold. Since Coach Powers always split the teams based on colors, everyone could plan ahead. Miraculously, the teams remained fairly even at twenty each. Natch wore the blue side of his shirt for the first time today.

  Sam took a spot near the front line, where Coach Powers had placed five red balls. Zack was fidgeting with excitement. He pointed at Sam and then made a slashing motion across his throat. He was getting way too into this, but more importantly, HE WAS GOING DOWN.

  Coach Powers blew the whistle, and the teams charged the central line. Three of the balls went to the blue team. One of them went to Zack and he immediately threw it at Sam. Sam was more than ready; she always charged the front line to draw the eager throwers. A shoulder roll to the right and the ball whizzed by harmlessly.

  Zack cursed quietly and Sam gave him a little wink.

  “Not that easy, cuz.”

  Whatever witty response he had was lost when he had to dodge a ball aimed at his head.

  There were more athletes on the blue team. A lot of the guys apparently didn’t feel manly in gold, and most of the girls in their class liked the gold. But that meant that Sabrina, the captain of the softball team; Rebecca, the award-winning swimmer; and Tasha were all on Sam’s team.

  The blue team was falling into a classic pattern of aiming for the perceived best players on the gold team. This gave Sam the opportunity to run around freely and collect stray balls for the best throwers. After the first ten minutes, most of the boys on Sam’s team were out and sitting on the sidelines looking depressed.

  Obviously Tasha’s old school played dodgeball, because she was a pro. She even knew to aim for people’s legs to decrease the odds of them catching the ball.

  For her part, Sam made for a great target. She brazenly strutted along the centerline basically begging for the blue team to hit her. Not that any of them could.

  Tasha caught a ball, taking the big football player that Natch had been using as shield out of the game. Even before he could walk off the court, Tasha whipped the ball back across and caught Natch in the side of the head.