by David Pogue
No wonder no phones are allowed. No wonder every room has this super-fancy laptop in it, she thought. It’s set up so that they can fix up our e-mails before they go on their way!
Every day, whenever she passed through the lobby, she had seen Candi, sitting there at her reception desk and tapping, tapping, tapping away on her computer. Now Abby wondered if that was part of Candi’s job, to read over the e-mails and cut out anything that might reveal Calabra’s secret.
After the lab, Abby hadn’t gone to lunch; she told Ferd that she wasn’t feeling well. Instead, she’d gone back to her room and woken up the laptop. She had a way to send e-mail that she was pretty sure would get right by Candi the E-mail Spy: she used the first-word code that Ryan had taught her.
She read it back to herself, to make sure that all the first words of the sentences made sense. “Remember The First Word Code? They Are Keeping Me Prisoner! This Place Is Really A Medicine Company. They Are Editing My E-mail! Can You Pick Me Up? Look Up ‘Calabra.’ ”
She was pretty sure that Candi wouldn’t find anything to cut out of it; unless you knew the code, it sounded pretty innocent. All but the word “Calabra.” But maybe Candi would just think that was a typing mistake. Abby hoped so, anyway.
The next step: figuring out a way to get out of this place. When Abby really thought about it, the whole thing seemed hopeless. You needed a key card to open any of the doors. Even if you had one, you had to get past Candi at the reception desk. Or you could go at night when she was gone, but then the motion detectors and the pressure sensors in the floors would set off the alarms. And that’s if the guys in the black shirts didn’t see you trying to escape first.
And even if they got out of the building complex—then what? Where would they go? They were miles from anywhere.
Ben. He’ll know what to do.
She decided to go find him in the cafeteria. Lunch wasn’t over yet—a good thing. Abby suddenly realized she was starving.
“Why do we have to sit here, anyway?” Ricky yelled. “I’m getting splattered!”
“Yeah, seriously,” muttered Eliza as loudly as it’s possible to mutter. They sat side by side on the concrete rim of the courtyard fountain. Ben was standing. Abby was pacing.
“Because the fountain is so loud, nobody’s gonna hear us,” Abby yelled back. There was a pause, as everyone spontaneously listened to the roar of the water for a moment.
“All right, look. Let’s say we believe you,” Eliza finally said. She had pulled her hands inside the tentlike caverns of her T-shirt to keep warm, so she looked like a bizarre orange mannequin with no arms. “Let’s say these guys are trying to turn us into their next miracle drug. I don’t like what they’re doing, and I don’t like how they’re doing it. But get real, Abby. You really think we can get out of here? This place is locked up like Fort Knox!”
Ricky looked at her. “What’s Fort Knox?”
Eliza scoffed at him. “It’s just a saying, numbskull. It means it’s really hard to get out of here.”
“Listen, you guys! I have it mostly figured out,” Abby announced. “We can get out of here if we all work together. But we need one of those security cards. After Ben set the alarms off the other night, they’re probably being a lot more careful about locking the doors. That’s the only part I haven’t figured out. They all wear security cards like name tags on their shirts, or stuck in their wallets or purses. I can’t think of any way to get our hands on one. One! That’s all we need, and we can get out of this place!”
Ben was looking at her with a crooked smile. His floppy hair looked like it was practically right in his eyeballs; after two weeks of camp, he needed a haircut.
“All you need is a security card?”
She nodded. “That’s the hard part.”
“Wanna see a trick?”
“Are you kidding me? You’re gonna do a magic trick right now?” she asked.
He held out his hands, empty, so she could see them. Then he turned them down toward the ground so she could see their backs. Then he put his hands together, like a sandwich.
“Abby Cadabra,” he said. He peeled his hands apart.
There was a security card between them.
Abby clapped her hands despite herself, and Ricky’s eyes were wide. “Hey! Where did you get that?”
“From Candi’s desk. The key we used to open the desk door also opens the desk drawer. Handy, eh? She must keep this card in there as a spare.” He shrugged. “I felt that I needed it more than she does.”
“Ben! You’re amazing,” said Abby. She held her hand up for a high five; he slapped her palm.
“So when do we make our big escape?” asked Eliza.
“Are you kidding me? Tonight. I don’t want to spend one single second hypnotized in some cat tube,” said Abby.
Ben smiled. “You mean a CAT scan.”
Abby turned to face the fountain. “I mean, we’re outta here. Are you guys with me?”
She meant to ask that question the way a cheerleader would—she already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear them jump up with team spirit and yell, “YEAH!!”
But that wasn’t the reaction she got.
“It’s not going to work,” Eliza said.
“I don’t want to go home!” pleaded Ricky.
Abby couldn’t believe it. “You don’t want—Ricky, are you kidding me? Do you want them to poke you full of needles and hypnotize you and knock you unconscious and cut open your brain?”
Ricky pouted and looked down at his feet.
“I like the remote-control helicopters,” was all he said.
Abby shot Ben a help-me-out-here! look, her hands spread apart.
Ben put his hand on Ricky’s shoulder. “Ricky, listen. I don’t think they’re going to let us do much more of the fun stuff after tomorrow,” he said. He pulled the camper calendar from his back jeans pocket and unfolded it. “You’re going to be in the hospital part of this camp. They want to find out how you got your power, and see if they can get it out of you. Like, with you strapped down to a table so you can’t move. With needles and stuff. Is that what you want?”
Ricky, deeply upset, began to cry.
“Nice job there, Captain Persuasion,” Eliza said to Ben dryly.
He shot her an irritated look.
“Ricky, Ricky . . . don’t be scared,” Ben said soothingly. “None of that’s going to happen if you’ll help us! Okay? In fact, I’ll tell you what. Help us get out of here tonight, and then I will personally take you to go fly some helicopters once we get home, okay? Won’t that be fun?”
Ricky nodded unhappily, wiping his nose with his sleeve.
“It’s going to be fine. Why don’t we let Abby tell us her plan for getting us out of here? Let’s listen to her idea, and then we’ll talk about it. Okay?”
He reached around Ricky with both arms as though about to give him a hug, but at the last minute, he chickened out and just patted Ricky’s back with both hands.
“All right,” said Abby finally. “Listen carefully now, because for the rest of the day, we’re gonna have to pretend that nothing’s up. And if one little thing goes wrong . . .”
She looked at Ricky’s quivering face and decided she’d better not finish that sentence. She had a lot of explaining to do—and a hard-boiled egg to swipe from the cafeteria.
Ricky and Eliza thought that Abby was crazy for wanting to escape from Camp Cadabra—or Calabra Pharmaceuticals, as they now knew it was called. But in the end, they agreed to join her.
They set their alarms for the middle of the night—“1:15 a.m. in the morning,” as Eliza called it. Nobody liked that idea much, either, but slipping out after most of the Calabra workers were asleep definitely seemed like the best idea.
By 1:20 a.m., Abby, Ben, and Eliza were all together in the lobby, leaning on the desk where Candi usually sat. But there was no sign of Ricky.
“Where is he?” Abby whispered.
“Why are you asking me?” Eliza whis
pered back.
“I’ll bet he’s still sleeping,” said Ben. “And I don’t know how we’re gonna wake him up without waking up everybody in the place.”
The three of them crossed the lobby toward the short hallway to Ricky’s room. They tried to knock on his door loudly enough to wake him, but gently enough not to get anyone’s attention.
There was still no answer. Abby got on the floor to call his name under the door. “Come on guys, help me out,” she said.
“Riccckkkeeeeeee! Rickeeeeeee!” they all hissed together, crouched on their hands and knees. “Wake up!!”
They were still there, their faces pressed against the doorsill, when the door flew open.
It was Ricky, yawning and blinking in his Spider-Man pajamas.
“What are you guys doing on the floor?”
“Come on! Get dressed,” said Abby, standing up. “You were supposed to wake up and escape with us! Come on!”
Ricky worked his jaw up and down a few times, as though it were a little rusty. He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”
“We’ve gotta go, Rick,” said Ben. “We need you to come with us! Can you hurry up and get dressed?”
Ten minutes later, the four campers were out in the lobby of their living pod, standing by the double doors that opened onto the hallway to freedom.
“Okay, so tell us again how we do this?” asked Eliza. For once, she wasn’t wearing a T-shirt that was six sizes too big. She was wearing a sweater that was six sizes too big.
Abby took a breath. “Okay, well, remember, our first worry is the motion sensors. It’s those little round lenses right inside the hallway doors. If they see any movement in the hallway, the metal gates are gonna come down, and we’ll be trapped like mice. That would not be good! So as soon as the hallway doors open, Ricky, you fog ’em up, okay?”
“I what?” said Ricky, still not entirely awake.
“Ricky, we went over this before. Use your power! Can’t you do that? Can’t you fog up glass from far away?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Ricky. “But I’ve never tried it on cameras.”
“Well, guess what? Tonight’s your lucky night. But first, we’ve got to open the doors to the hallway. Ben, this is you.”
“Yes, captain,” he said. He pulled Candi’s spare key card from his pocket. All four kids stepped back so they’d be out of the way when the doors opened—and not visible to the motion cameras just inside the hallway.
Ben swiped the card across the black box by the door. There was a click, and the doors swung outward into the hallway.
“Okay, Ricky!” Abby whispered. “Do your thing!”
Ricky peeked into the hallway and saw the small round lenses mounted near the floor, one on each side of the hallway. As quietly as he could, he did his Spanish counting-by-twos while breathing in (and it’s not easy to do that quietly).
“Dos, cuatro, seis, ocho, diez!” he said.
The light was fairly dim, but Abby thought that she could see a silvery, misty reflection on the lens, which usually looked like a solid black circle. Ricky changed his focus to the lens on the opposite side and repeated his counting.
“I think he did it!” Abby said, beaming. “Good job, Ricky!”
Ricky beamed even more.
“So what now?” asked Eliza. If anyone in the world could actually act bored during a panicky, late-night escape from a secret scientific laboratory, it was Eliza.
“Now we have to get to the other end of the hallway,” Abby said. “The problem is the floor. It’s pressure-sensitive, you guys. If you step on it, then you set off the alarm. This is all you, Eliza.”
“Yeah, great,” said Eliza. She had never been a fan of this part of Abby’s scheme. “Couldn’t we just pole vault?”
“Come on, Eliza,” chided Ben. “Be a good sport. And quick, before those lenses unfog.”
Eliza had never been good at being a good sport. “Okay, first of all, I’m not your trained dog. I don’t levitate on command. Second of all, I told you: this isn’t going to work. I can’t balance when I’m levitating. It’s like standing on marbles. I tip right over.”
“Please, Eliza. I know you don’t do it on command; we’re asking you. There’s not going to be any way across that floor without you. And unless we get across that floor, we’re staying here another week!”
“Eliza, please,” said Ben.
“Yeah! I used my power,” added Ricky with pride.
Eliza crossed her arms. “Well, I can’t balance.”
Abby nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I was wondering if you’d ever tried levitating, you know . . . on your back?”
“On my back? Are you—That is the dumbest idea I ever heard!”
There was an uncomfortable silence. And it took Ricky to break it. “Why is that dumb? That way, you wouldn’t fall down. You’d already be down!”
“It’s going to work, Eliza!” said Abby, giving it one last try. “Look: you lie down, just like you’re on a towel on the beach, okay? You’re levitating just a tiny bit off the ground. We give your feet a little push, and you glide across to the other side. That’s it! If you touch the floor a little here and there, it’s not gonna matter; the alarm only goes off if somebody is walking on it. Please, Eliza. We need you!”
Eliza sighed and looked into the hallway. “Well, it’s never gonna work, but apparently you need to see that for yourself. Where do you want me?”
“Oh, you’re awesome, Eliza,” Ben said. Abby and Ricky tried to offer her high fives, but Eliza wasn’t interested.
“Okay, so, sort of lie down with your arms out, right here,” Abby said, indicating a spot right at the opening of the hallway.
Eliza lay down. “Okay, now what?”
“Come on, guys, help me out!” whispered Abby, squatting down by Eliza’s feet. We’ll have to give her a little push!”
The two boys kneeled and put their hands on Eliza’s sneakers.
“Aim her straight, you guys. Eliza, are you ready?”
“Let’s get it over with,” came the reply.
“Okay, Eliza. Now—you know—rise up! Think about those buffalos,” Abby said.
“Walking backward,” added Ben.
“Wearing diapers!” Ricky reminded her, giggling with glee.
“I know how to do it!” Eliza snapped.
If you were right down next to her, with your head against the floor, you might have been able to see that her whole body had lifted off the floor by just the tiniest little bit—about the height of a chocolate bar.
“Okay, guys!” said Abby. “One, two—”
“Wait!” said Ricky. “The camera! It’s not fogged up anymore!”
It was true. The silvery sheen on the motion detector had almost completely evaporated.
“Well, juice it up again, will you?” Eliza said, a little bit crankily.
“Would you mind re-fogging it, Ricky?” said Abby. “Keep checking it, too. We can’t afford to let it unfog until we’re out of here.”
Ricky did his Spanish counting thing again, fogged the camera, and then got ready to push.
“All right, let’s try this again,” said Abby. “Eliza, you up?”
“I’m up,” she said.
“All right, here we go: One, two, three—push!”
Abby, Ben, and Ricky pushed against Eliza’s feet. Of course, they had no idea how hard to push; they had had very little practice launching eleven-year-old levitating girls down hallways.
If you tried to push a normal person across the floor, you’d have to push very hard, because the person’s body would rub against the carpet and not go very far at all. But if somebody were lying on a big skateboard, you wouldn’t have to push nearly as hard. And if there were nothing between the person and the floor but air, you wouldn’t have to push very hard at all.
But they realized that too late. They pushed Eliza much too hard. Her body, with her arms out like a T, zipped across the floor like a roller coaster going downhill. H
er sweater dragged on the floor a little, and she wobbled enough to scrape the tiles—not enough to trigger the alarm. But before she even realized what was going on, she had reached the doors at the far end of the hallway—with her head.
WHACK!
“OW!” she yelled, thumping to the floor. She sat up, rubbing her head. “Jeez, you people! What are you trying to do, kill me?”
The three other kids apologized, sincerely and as loudly as they could while still whispering. “I’m sorry, Eliza!” “We didn’t know!” “Are you okay?”
Eliza, now safely on the part of the floor that wasn’t wired to the alarm, glared at them for another minute, then turned around and pushed the far doors open. She could see the long, carpeted hallway that led to the building’s main lobby—but suddenly she stopped.
“Wait—now what? Do I just go? How do you guys get over here?”
Ricky and Ben turned to Abby with an expectant look on their faces, ready for the next instruction. There was only one problem: Abby didn’t have one to give them.
“I—I didn’t think about this part,” she admitted.
“Well, great,” Eliza said.
“Is there a button over there, Eliza?” said Ben. “Something that turns off the floor?” He had seen Phil and other people walk that hallway without triggering any alarm, so he knew there must be a way to turn off the floor’s pressure sensitivity. But whatever the control was, Eliza couldn’t find it.
Eliza poked around the far walls and the double doors. She shook her head no. “Nothing here,” she said.
“Maybe we should go back to bed?” said Ricky hopefully.
“No, no, come on, you guys,” said Abby.
“Maybe I should just escape,” Eliza offered. “And I’ll find a way to come back for you.”
“No!” said the other three, all together.
“We’ve come this far,” Abby added. “We can figure this out!”
“I don’t know, Abby,” Ben said softly. “Only Eliza can get across the floor without sounding the alarm. I don’t see how the rest of us are gonna get across.”
“You’re right,” said Abby, suddenly confident. “Only Eliza can get across.” She turned. “Eliza! You have to come back!”
