by Dustin Brady
The suits grabbed Eric, Charlie, and me by the shoulders, but their grip wasn’t as firm this time. They seemed really shaken up. I was shaken, too, though not so much by the evil plan. I mean, the plan was evil to be sure. It was maybe the most evil plan I’d ever heard. I’d previously thought that blowing up the world was the worst thing a supervillain could do. But trapping humanity inside a video game so he could get some sort of sick pleasure out of it? That was next-level supervillainy.
No, the thing that had me reeling most was the betrayal of my best friend. Not only has Eric been my best friend for pretty much forever, but we’ve been through more together than probably any pair of friends on earth. Like, we took down an army of praying mantis aliens, and that wasn’t even one of the ten craziest things we’d done over the past five months. And then in five minutes, he’d thrown it all away—for what? I still wasn’t sure. Did he think the Reubenverse was going to be cool or something? Even while we were being led to our Bottomless Pit of Doom, he still looked excited. What was wrong with him?
Then I saw it.
You know that moment in movies when the hero pieces everything together and time slows down? The footsteps always get echoey, and the camera zooms way in on a detail so small that no one could ever notice it without Superman vision and the ability to slow down time. I always thought that was just a dumb movie thing. It is not. It actually happened to me the moment I noticed that Eric was still wearing his dopey spy watch.
In real life, I shouldn’t have been able to see more than that. But in super-slow-motion, zoomed-in movie mode, I noticed that a small, red recording light was blinking. Then I noticed the counter. Five minutes and four seconds.
Eric had recorded the whole thing.
Chapter 19
The White House
Eric noticed that I’d seen the watch and winked at me. I still couldn’t figure out his plan—the recording wasn’t going to do us much good tumbling down a bottomless pit. As it turned out, I didn’t need to figure out what Eric had planned because he revealed it to everyone the second he stepped within grabbing range of the Washington, D.C., door. As we passed the checkpoint, Eric shot out his hand and pulled the door right into his suit. Eric’s suit stumbled for just a moment, which gave Eric enough time to squirm free, roll into the blue light, and disappear.
Eric had escaped so fast that nobody had time to process what had happened. I felt my suit’s grip loosen just a bit, which gave me the chance to wriggle free, too. As soon as I got one foot into the light, I started getting sucked inside. I reached for Charlie, but his suit spun him away from me. “Charlie!” I kicked my legs to swim back out, but the force was too strong.
The light sucked me in, tumbled me around a few times, then spit me onto a hardwood floor like a water slide.
Before I could figure out where I was, Eric’s face appeared over my head. “Where’s Charlie?!”
A hand appeared in the doorway—a beefy, certainly-not-Charlie-sized hand. Before the body that was attached to that hand could make it through, Eric slammed the door. At least, he tried to slam it. The door wouldn’t quite close all the way thanks to the arm stuck in between.
“AHHHH!” someone screamed from the other side.
Even though Eric was pushing all his weight against the door, the arm squeezed farther in. Then a head CLUNKed, and the door opened even more. I ran over, pushed the arm up with all my might and finally got it to slide back inside the blue. With the hand out of the way, Eric finally closed and locked the door.
Eric and I both slid to the ground to catch our breaths, which kicked up a plume of dust. We seemed to be in an old mansion like one you go to on boring field trips after they run out of cool places to visit. Once my eyes adjusted, I could tell we’d emerged from the closet of a giant, cobweb-filled bedroom.
“Is this the White House?!” Eric exclaimed.
“What? No. Do you really think they’d put one of these doors in the White House?”
“It’s a mansion in Washington, D.C.! It’s definitely the White House! Wow, what a lucky break this is!”
“It’s not the White House! Look!” I dragged Eric to the window, and we peeked out. Our window overlooked a backyard overgrown with weeds and gnarled trees. By peeking around the corner, we could see that the house was covered with out-of-control ivy.
“Maybe it’s the part of the White House you don’t see,” Eric suggested.
BANG!
We spun around to see the closet door start to buckle. “Can we get out of here now?!” I yelled.
BANG!
The door cracked a little. We ran out of the room and down a winding staircase. As we sprinted through the mansion’s library, I tried to figure out Eric’s plan. “Why did you want to come to Washington, D.C.? Do you know someone here who can help us?”
“Yeah,” Eric said, lagging behind because he kept trying to find secret passages by touching everything on the bookshelves. “We’re going to play the recording for the one person who can help us.”
“Great! Do you have a relative who works for the FBI or something?” I spotted the front door across the foyer and sprinted toward it. I unlocked the door just as we heard the CRACK of the closet door busting open and the THOMP THOMP THOMP of suits pouring into the bedroom. We sprinted outside to gray skies and a steady rain.
“No, we’ll give it to someone even better,” Eric said. “The president!”
I slammed on the brakes. “The what?!”
“The president! He’s the only one powerful enough to take down Max Reuben!” Eric grinned. He was so proud of himself. My heart sank.
“Get in the bushes,” I said, pushing Eric toward a thorny thicket next to the house.
“What? No, I—ow! That hurts! Hang on—ow, ow!”
A suit emerged from the front door, and I put my hand over Eric’s mouth. The suit looked both ways, spoke into his radio, then splashed down the street. A few seconds later, four more suits jogged outside and fanned through the neighborhood. Once things quieted down again, I turned to Eric and spoke as calmly as I could. “There is a zero percent chance that we reach the president without getting arrested or shot.”
Eric shook his head. “Listen, we’ll walk to the White House and play the clip for the Secret Service. Then we’ll … ”
I tuned out Eric and started fiddling with a golf ball in my pocket as I brainstormed ways to get us out of this mess. We could try playing the recording at FBI headquarters. Where was FBI headquarters? Actually, the Pentagon might be easier to find since it’s shaped like a pentagon. Maybe we could …
I suddenly realized something and let out a gasp.
“Yeah!” Eric cheered. “I knew you’d like the idea!”
“No, I hate the idea,” I said as I slowly took my hand out of my pocket.
“Then you must not understand it. See, all we have to do … ”
“Eric,” I interrupted. “I didn’t have a golf ball in my pocket this morning.”
“Uh, what?”
I opened my hand to reveal a glowing yellow ball.
Now it was Eric’s turn to gasp. “You still have that from the game?!”
“I guess I do.” I stared at the ball in wonder when another realization hit me. “I know where we can play that recording.”
“Where?!”
“We have to go back through the closet.”
Chapter 20
Dodo Doody
“Tell me the code word again,” I instructed.
“Banana.”
“Good. And you won’t come in until you hear that, right?”
“Of course not.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
I nodded and said the thing that people say right before the last big action scene of a spy movie. “See you on the other side.”
Eric fist-pounded me. “Ten-four, good buddy.” He disappeared around the corner and started climbing the ivy. I waited until I heard him reach the awning, then edged my way to the front door. With any luck, all the suits would be out looking for us, which would leave the door unguarded.
When I reached the porch and peeked over the edge, I rediscovered that I have no luck. Two suits guarded the doorway. I slumped against the house and tried to figure out a new way inside. That’s when I remembered Dark Agent, a spy video game Eric used to make me watch him play. In the game, Eric would sneak through room after room of guards by creating distractions. How would he distract these well-trained professionals? By throwing a can against the wall. “What was that?” the dumb video game guards would say. Then Eric would sneak behind their backs while they checked out the can.
“They fall for it every time!” I’d say. “This is so unrealistic.”
“Jesse, this is how it works in the real world. They had an actual spy help them make the game, OK?”
With no other options, I decided to give it a shot. I didn’t see any cans lying around, but there were plenty of rocks on the ground. I picked up one of the larger rocks, slipped back behind the bush, and aimed for a big puddle on the sidewalk.
SPLOOSH!
“What was that?”
So far, so good. I waited for the suits to check out the sound, but they didn’t move. Finally, I picked up another rock and tried again.
SPLOOSH!
This time, the suits saw the splash. But instead of checking it out, they followed the path of the rock’s flight back to my bush. “There!” one of them said, pointing directly at me.
I knew video games were unrealistic. The suits ran down the stairs. “Where’s the other one?!” they shouted. I tightened my grip on the invincibility orb, even though I knew it was way too early to use it. I needed to hold on to it until I got into the bedroom to give us enough time to make it through the door. When the suits ran off the porch, I tried to surprise them by running toward them.
One of the suits got down in a defensive basketball stance while the other guarded the sidewalk to keep me from running down the street. I ran harder, and as soon as I got to the basketball stance guy, I spun. He grabbed my arm, but the spin move yanked it away before he could pull me in. I slipped past the other suit, who thought I was going to try to run down the street, and sprinted into the house.
“You’ve got one coming inside,” I heard one of them say over the radio. Great. Maybe he was only talking to one or two guys in the bedroom?
When I reached the foyer, I found that he was not talking to just one or two guys in the bedroom. He was talking to possibly every suit that Max Reuben had ever employed. They all stood on the steps with their guns drawn.
“Don’t move, or we will shoot you,” the suit up front said. The two suits from outside quickly ran in and closed the door behind me to cut off my escape. I slowly raised my hand to my chest.
“I SAID DON’T MOVE!” the suit repeated.
Now or never. I pressed the ball into my chest. It squished like a water balloon. I pushed harder until I felt a pop and immediately got warm.
Dodo doody doodoo doody-doody.
I looked at my hands. They were glowing and singing the obnoxious invincibility tune.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The sudden invincibility must have spooked the suits because they all opened fire at once. Their bullets just absorbed into my body.
Dodo doody.
I smiled. Go time.
Doodoo doody-doody.
I ran toward the stairs. Even though some of the suits looked nervous, they held their ground and kept shooting. That was a very brave, very stupid move. I lowered my shoulder and plowed through the crowd like a bulldozer. One particularly large suit at the top of the stairs crouched down like he wanted to wrestle me, and I stiff-armed him into next week.
Dodo doody doodoo doody-doody.
I turned right, then made a quick left into the bedroom. More suits. A lot more. The first one lunged for me, and I spun him behind my back through the door. The second one punched me in the face. I noticed that he seemed to be holding something back, probably because he felt bad about punching a 12-year-old in the face. I didn’t feel a thing. I grabbed his arm and threw him through the ceiling into the attic.
“BANANA?!” I heard through the window.
“NOT YET!”
Dodo doody.
A third suit had no qualms about assaulting a kid and punched me in the stomach as hard as he could. I didn’t feel that, either. He and I stared at each other for a second before I grabbed his arm and threw him through the hole in the ceiling that Suit #2 had created a moment earlier.
“WHAT ABOUT NOW?!” Eric was peeking through the window.
“JUST WAIT!”
Doodoo doody-doody.
The suits all rushed at once. Probably 20 of them piled on top of me, sneaking punches and trying to pin my arms. I waited patiently to give them all a chance to join the pile. I hadn’t been keeping track of the invincibility, but it had to be almost over by now. Finally, I sprang up, catapulting all the suits through the wall and into the backyard.
Eric stared at me through the hole. “Can I come in now?”
“Yes!”
Eric remained still.
I rolled my eyes. “BANANA!”
He grinned and climbed into the room. “This is awesome! So I can punch you as hard as I want, and it won’t hurt?”
Before I could answer, one more suit stepped through the closet door. This one carried a gun, too, but it wasn’t a normal gun like my friends on the stairs had. It was one of the plasma guns I’d seen at Bionosoft that could zap us straight to Planet Bottomless Pit. He rolled for cover behind the bed and loaded a canister.
Dodo—dodo—dodo.
My body started blinking as the invincibility wore off. “Eric! Curl into a ball!”
“Huh?”
I picked up Eric and used the last of my video game super strength to throw him as hard as I could just like I’d wanted to do in the first level of Doom Island. The suit popped up from behind the bed just in time to see Eric the Human Cannonball flying toward his face. He dropped the gun and raised his hands in self-defense, but it was no use—the cannonball won. Eric knocked the suit through the hole in the wall and picked up the plasma gun. “Let’s go!”
We dove through the closet door just as the suits from the stairs started pouring into the bedroom. I tumbled a few times in the blue light, then rolled onto the floor of Max Reuben’s headquarters. As soon as I hit the ground, I grabbed the door’s power cord and yanked as hard as I could.
BWOWRRRrrrrr.
The door powered down. Eric cracked it open to take a peek, then stepped aside so I could see. Just a wall. Good. I took a second to breathe and prepare myself to face a new onslaught of suits. How many were left? Twenty? Fifty?
I got the answer as soon as I turned. Zero.
The room was empty except for Mr. Gregory at the control tower and Charlie staring at us.
“Charlie!” I yelled. “So glad you’re OK! Sorry for leaving you.”
Charlie didn’t say anything. He looked like he was going to throw up.
“Where did everyone go?”
Still nothing.
“It’s OK,” Eric said. “Jesse had a great idea! See, we’re going to … ”
“DON’T SAY ANYTHING!” Charlie yelled.
“Why? Nobody’s here.”
Charlie pointed at the control tower. I was confused. Mr. Gregory was the only one there. Just then, a second person poked his head around the other side of the control tower. My blood ran cold.
It was another Mr. Gregory.
Chapter 21
Sparky the Squirrel Saves the Day
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“Which one is the robot?!” Eric asked, pointing the plasma gun at the control tower.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said.
“You don’t know?!” I asked. “It’s the one who walked into the room while we were gone, right?”
“Yeah, but I never saw that happen because the whole room went bonkers when you guys disappeared. Those guys in suits started running everywhere. Max yelled something about a Code Black, then sent half of them after you and brought the other half with him. They grabbed my mom and sisters and left me alone in here with my dad and the robot.”
We looked back at the control tower. The two Mr. Gregorys typed furiously on two different keyboards.
“I’m telling you for the last time, get your hand off the keyboard!” Mr. Gregory #1 yelled.
“My son is in there!” Mr. Gregory #2 shot back.
“Hey!” Eric yelled.
Both Mr. Gregorys turned to us. Their eyes got big when they saw that Eric was pointing the plasma gun at them. “Eric, put that down,” Mr. Gregory #1 said.
“Which one of you is the real Mr. Gregory?” Eric asked.
“I am,” they both said at the exact same time, in the exact same tone.
“I’m keeping Christian alive, and he’s trying to cook him in there by overclocking the processor,” Mr. Gregory #2 said.
“No, listen. He’s … ”
Beep-beep-beep.
One of the screens began flashing red.
“Oh no,” Mr. Gregory #1 said. “Oh nonono.” He ran to the screen and started punching buttons.
“Stop, he’ll never make it!” Mr. Gregory #2 yelled as he hurdled a chair and tried to push Mr. Gregory #1 away from the keyboard.
Eric handed the gun to me. “Do something.”
