Code Red

by H. I. Larry

  It was 3:30pm and Zac was outside Agent Big Boss’s office.

  He was just about to knock on the door when he saw Big Boss approaching from the opposite direction.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said Zac brightly. Leon had warned Zac to be on his best behaviour in the meeting.

  ‘Hello, Agent Rock Star,’ said Agent Big Boss as he reached the door. ‘Ready to behave yourself?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said Zac. Just as soon as I get that holo-projector back, he thought to himself.

  Agent Big Boss glanced down at the band-aid on Zac’s nose. ‘Get into a fight on the way here?’ he asked.

  ‘No sir,’ said Zac. ‘I, uh, got hit by a football.’

  Agent Big Boss raised an eyebrow. Then he pulled a pen from his pocket and handed it to Zac.

  Zac stared at the pen. It had a little ring that attached to his GIB clip.

  ‘What does it do?’ Zac asked, expecting some kind of hidden gadget function.

  Big Boss gave him a strange look. ‘It writes, Rock Star. It’s a pen.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Zac, putting the pen on his clip. ‘Right.’

  Agent Big Boss shook his head. He opened the office door and the two of them walked inside.

  There were some GIB agents already waiting in the office, but Zac didn’t recognise any of them. He sat down in an empty chair.

  ‘All right,’ said Agent Big Boss. ‘Here’s what we know so far: we’ve got a powerful BIG agent on the loose. He appears to be an exact double of Agent Rock Star here.’

  Everyone looked at Zac. He avoided making eye contact with any of them. Instead, he unclipped his new pen and pretended to take notes.

  ‘Our info from BIG’s Central Command is limited,’ Agent Big Boss went on. ‘However, we do know that the new BIG agent plans to set off a weapon inside GIB HQ this Sunday at midnight.’

  Old news, thought Zac, glancing down at his watch.

  Time to get out of here. Pretending to be stroking his chin thoughtfully, Zac lifted up a finger and gently tapped the side of his nose.

  As soon as his finger hit the band-aid, an enormous stream of fake blood began flowing out of Zac’s nose.

  Big Boss stopped short. ‘Agent Rock Star! Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Zac said thickly through his bleeding nose. ‘Just a little nosebleed!’

  But little was not the word for it.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Agent Big Boss, looking a bit grossed out.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Zac quickly, covering his face. ‘Back in a minute!’

  He jumped up from his chair and ran out the door.

  Racing to the end of the corridor, Zac took the lift to Level 53 and headed into the toilets.

  Third toilet along, he reminded himself.

  Zac stepped inside and locked the door behind him, and then ripped the bandaid off his nose. Immediately, the bleeding stopped. Now for the disguise.

  He looked around and saw a big heavy plastic bag stuffed behind the toilet. He reached into the bag and pulled out copies of Agent Checkmate’s ID tags and key cards. He also found a GIB uniform marked Top-Secret Zone, and…

  ‘Aarghh!’

  It was the most realistic mask he had ever seen! It was almost as though Leon had peeled off Agent Checkmate’s real face and put it in the bag.

  Gross.

  Agent Checkmate Reusable Mask Disguise

  Zac began to stretch the mask over his own face.

  KNOCK KNOCK!

  Uh-oh. There was somebody at the door!

  ‘Uh, someone’s in here!’ said Zac awkwardly.

  ‘Agent Rock Star?’ asked the man outside.

  ‘No,’ lied Zac, trying to disguise his voice. ‘This is Agent Checkmate! Agent Rock Star just left.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the voice. ‘Agent Big Boss sent me to check on him.’

  ‘Well, he’s not here,’ said Zac, trying frantically to pull the mask over his head. ‘He’s somewhere else!’

  ‘OK, well, if you see him –’ ‘Yeah, I’ll definitely tell him you were looking for him,’ said Zac, zipping up Checkmate’s special TSZ uniform. ‘Now if you don’t mind…’

  ‘Right, sorry,’ the man said quickly. ‘I’ll, uh, leave you to it.’

  Zac heard the sound of footsteps leading out of the room. Breathing a sigh of relief, he opened the toilet door and walked outside.

  Then he dashed out of the bathroom and headed for the Top-Secret Zone.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  The lift doors opened onto Level 52, the entrance to the TSZ.

  To Zac’s surprise, there were no guards. Just a long, white corridor with a door at the end.

  Zac jogged along the corridor to the door and swiped Checkmate’s ID card. The heavy door opened automatically.

  Zac stepped through the doorway into a tiny white room.

  The door closed behind him. Suddenly all the lights switched off.

  A computerised voice echoed in the darkness.

  SCANNING FOR DANGEROUS MATERIRLS

  A bright green light blasted Zac from all sides.

  NO DANGEROUS MATERIALS DETECTED

  The room went dark again.

  INITIATING FACIAL SCAN

  A wide beam of blue light flashed out from the wall in front of Zac.

  Time to put this disguise to the test, he thought.

  The beam passed up and down Zac’s face several times, then flickered off. For one awful moment, Zac thought the mask had failed to fool the scan.

  But then the computer voice spoke again.

  SCAN COMPLETE.

  IDENTITY CONFIRMED.

  WELCOME, AGENT CHECKMATE.

  The lights flickered back on, and a door hissed open at the far side of the room.

  Zac stepped out into the TSZ.

  Straight away, he realised there was a problem with Leon’s plan.

  The TSZ was huge! There were ten whole levels of classified gadgets, hidden research labs and secret rooms.

  GIB Command Headquarters [Lower floors detail]

  It would take hours to search the TSZ. Why hadn’t they thought of this?

  And how was he going to explain being away for so long to Agent Big Boss?

  Forget it, Zac told himself. Worry about that later. Right now you’ve got to find that holo-projector.

  Zac began performing a systematic search of the TSZ. He worked his way through room after room, all of them gleaming white and filled with incredible top-secret GIB technology.

  This stuff was state-of-the-art, even for GIB. Normally Zac would have been absolutely amazed by all of these gadgets. But right now he had only one gadget on his mind.

  After about 20 minutes, Zac passed a security agent talking into his SpyPad. Zac caught a bit of the agent’s conversation and froze.

  ‘You mean he just ran out of the meeting?’

  Uh-oh, thought Zac. It sounded like GIB were onto him.

  ‘Yes sir, Agent Big Boss,’ the agent continued, disappearing around the corner. ‘We’ll keep an eye out for him.’

  Zac breathed a sigh of relief. Don’t panic, he told himself. This is why you’re in disguise.

  But this search was taking far too long. Minutes began slipping into hours.

  Some time later, Zac checked his watch.

  Three hours of searching and still no holo-projector! He took the stairs up to Level 43, the highest floor of the TSZ.

  More cold white labs. More computers. No holo-projector.

  Zac was almost ready to give up when a sign on another door caught his eye.

  That’s the same symbol that the Black Jungle agents had on their uniforms, thought Zac. This had to be where the holo-projector was being kept!

  Zac pulled out Agent Checkmate’s card and swiped it. The door stayed closed.

  He tried again. Nothing. Great, thought Zac. Now what?

  But then he saw another agent approaching the door.

  She had long, brown hair and was wearing a white uniform just like the ones
the Black Jungle team had been dressed in. She was deep in conversation with someone on her SpyPad.

  ‘You mean Agent Rock Star is still missing?’ she said. ‘How in the world could he stay hidden for this long?’

  ‘Not hidden.’ Zac could hear Agent Big Boss’s angry voice through the SpyPad. ‘He’s obviously snooping around to find out what we know about Agent High Pants.’

  Aha! That proved it. Big Boss was definitely hiding something about Zac’s grandpa.

  The brown-haired agent swiped her ID card and the Invisibles door hissed open. Then the agent walked right past Zac.

  ‘Even if Rock Star is after the holo-projector,’ she said, ‘there’s no way he’d be able to make it this far into the TSZ without getting caught.’

  Oh yeah? thought Zac. And before the door closed again, he slipped through and followed the agent inside.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  The agent with the SpyPad disappeared through another door to her left, leaving Zac alone in the corridor.

  Unlike the big bright rooms outside, this corridor was narrow and dimly lit. It took Zac’s eyes a minute to adjust.

  It sounded like he was on the right track. The holo-projector was somewhere in this section of the TSZ.

  But even Agent Checkmate wasn’t allowed in here, so Zac’s disguise was useless. He would have to be careful he wasn’t seen.

  He cautiously began making his way down the corridor.

  Every room along the corridor was hidden by dark, tinted windows. Every door was closed, locked, and marked with the same eye symbol.

  Zac glanced at the signs on the doors as he walked past.

  Zac had no idea what any of this was. What could possibly be so top-secret that not even Top-Secret Zone agents were allowed to see it?

  Zac froze halfway down the corridor.

  OPERATION: BLRCK JUNGLE

  This was it. It had to be.

  Zac pressed his face up to the tinted window to try to see inside, but it was too dark. He got out his SpyPad and set it to Laser.

  Pointing the SpyPad at the window, he traced a wide circle in the glass with the laser. The glass circle slipped and fell towards Zac. He caught the glass just in time to stop it smashing on the ground.

  Then he laid the glass down carefully on the floor, and climbed in through the hole.

  There was a light switch at the door, but Zac didn’t want to risk attracting attention by turning it on. He peered around in the darkness.

  The room was full of computers and filing cabinets, with a big meeting desk in the middle.

  One wall was covered almost entirely by a map of the Black Jungle.

  On the opposite wall was another map. This one looked only half-finished, and was filled with big empty spaces. It was labelled ‘Lunar Command Station’.

  A little box on the meeting desk caught Zac’s eye. The box was sealed with tape and had a little note scrawled on it:

  To be analysed

  and filed today.

  Zac tore open the box. Yes! The holo-projector was sitting inside. Zac grabbed it and stuffed it into his pocket.

  Checking that the corridor was still empty, he clambered back through the hole in the window.

  Now to find the garbage chute. Leon had said there was one on every floor of the TSZ.

  Zac glanced up and down the hallway. There. At the very end of the narrow corridor was a little metal door.

  Zac dashed across and heaved it open.

  Buzz Leon, wait two minutes, then drop the holo-projector, he reminded himself.

  He sent Leon an alert on his SpyPad, and then set his watch to count down two minutes.

  02:00.00

  Zac glanced back over his shoulder. The corridor was still empty.

  01:30.00

  Thirty seconds gone. A minute and a half to go. Leon’s plan was going to work! They would finally find out what was going on with the holo-projector!

  01:00.00

  Halfway there.

  For a second, Zac thought he heard a voice behind him. He spun around, but there was no-one there.

  00:30.00

  Zac held the holo-projector out over the garbage chute, ready to drop it in. Ten seconds to go. Five seconds.

  00:00.00

  Zac let go of the holo-projector. It clattered down the metal garbage chute. He had done it.

  Just then Zac felt a hand on his shoulder. It was the brown-haired woman from before, and she had two GIB security agents by her side.

  The woman gave him a cold smile. ‘What are you doing here, Checkmate?’

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  ‘Right this way, Agent Checkmate.’

  The GIB security agents had escorted Zac down to Level 52. They had led him into a tiny waiting room with an even tinier bench in the corner.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said the brown-haired woman from the TSZ.

  Zac sat down. How in the world was he going to get out of this one?

  ‘You’d better have a very good explanation for all of this,’ said the woman.

  ‘I do!’ said Zac, trying quickly to come up with something.

  But at that moment Agent Big Boss burst into the room.

  ‘Sir,’ the woman beamed. ‘We found Agent Checkmate sneaking around inside the Invisibles Department!’

  ‘That’s not Agent Checkmate,’ said Big Boss. He marched up to Zac and ripped off his mask.

  ‘Agent Rock Star?’ the woman gaped.

  ‘How did you…?’ Zac began.

  ‘We found these in the bathroom on Level 53,’ said Big Boss.

  He held up the clothes that Zac had changed out of earlier that day. They were still covered in fake blood.

  Zac could have kicked himself. He’d been so distracted by the agent outside the bathroom door that he’d forgotten to hide his old clothes after he got changed!

  ‘You need to learn to cover your tracks, Rock Star,’ Agent Big Boss said. ‘Now then, where is it?’

  ‘Where is what?’ replied Zac, playing dumb.

  ‘Don’t give me that!’ said Agent Big Boss angrily. ‘I know you’ve taken the holo-projector! Now where is it?’

  Zac stared down at his feet. This was like being hauled into the principal’s office, only a hundred times worse.

  ‘Sir,’ said the woman, ‘I caught him standing with his hand in the garbage chute!’

  Agent Big Boss turned to one of the security agents. ‘I want a complete search of the garbage disposal system,’ he ordered. ‘Find me that holo-projector!’

  The security agent nodded and left the room.

  Agent Big Boss turned to Zac. ‘Never in a million years,’ he said furiously, ‘would I have imagined that our finest spy would turn against his own agency.’

  ‘What? No!’ Zac protested, looking up at Big Boss. ‘I wasn’t –’

  ‘You have disobeyed a direct order from GIB,’ said Agent Big Boss angrily, ‘sneaked into the Top-Secret Zone, stolen GIB property…’

  ‘Sir, please!’ said Zac desperately. ‘If you just let me explain –’

  But Agent Big Boss didn’t want to hear it. ‘Your parents have been informed of the situation,’ he went on, ignoring Zac. ‘Wait here until we decide what to do with you.’

  He walked to the door, getting ready to leave. ‘And Rock Star,’ he added, ‘you could be suspended from spying for this. Don’t try anything foolish.’

  An hour later, Zac was still sitting alone in the little room, waiting for GIB to decide his fate. He glanced at his watch.

  In just over three days, the BIG agent – the other Zac Power – was going to set off that Tech Blaster and destroy all of GIB’s work.

  And here was the real Zac stuck inside GIB Headquarters, with everyone acting like he was the bad guy.

  His SpyPad buzzed. Zac hit the answer button.

  ‘Zac!’ said Leon. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Leon, I am so busted!’ said Zac. ‘I got caught in the TSZ. They’re talking about suspen
ding me from spy work!’

  ‘No way,’ said Leon, sounding shocked. ‘They wouldn’t!’

  ‘You didn’t see the look on Agent Big Boss’s face,’ said Zac.

  ‘Well, we can worry about that later,’ said Leon. ‘Right now, we need to get you out of there. I’ll meet you at the vehicle hangar on Level 56.’

  ‘But Agent Big Boss said to stay –’ ‘Zac, we’ve come this far,’ Leon interrupted. ‘We can explain everything to GIB later. Besides, you’re the one who said the holo-projector had something to do with whatever BIG is planning. Don’t you want to find out what it says?’

  Zac couldn’t believe it. For once it was Leon making him do the dangerous thing.

  ‘OK,’ Zac said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  ‘I’m shutting down the power on your floor,’ said Leon. ‘Get ready to run.’

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Zac jumped to his feet.

  Seconds later, he heard the sound of a generator powering down. Everything went dark.

  Zac switched his SpyPad’s torch back on and moved across to the doorway.

  Grabbing hold of the sliding door with both hands, he heaved it open and squeezed outside.

  Zac could hear confused voices coming from along the corridor.Torch lights shone around in the darkness.

  He walked quickly towards the lift, dodging the other agents and trying to keep away from the beams of their torches.

  Zac rounded a corner and ran straight into an agent.

  ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ he said crankily. Then he pushed past Zac and kept walking.

  Why hadn’t he called out to security? Of course, thought Zac. Most of them still don’t know I’m in trouble.

  Zac reached the lift and hit the button. Nothing happened.

  It took him a second to realise the problem. No electricity, he reminded him-self. It really had been a long day.

  He darted down another corridor and raced down the stairwell to Level 56.

  As he ran out into the enormous vehicle and aircraft hangar, Zac looked around for Leon.