Codename Zero

by Chris Rylander

  “Can you hear me, Zero?” he said. “Where is Olek?”

  My voice wouldn’t work for some reason. So I just shook my head with my useless mouth hanging open. I took a deep breath and tried again.

  “I don’t know. He ran, I think out the back door,” I said.

  “Wait here,” he said and leaped up the stairs in what seemed like three steps.

  With my back to the wall, I sat up fully. My brother was slumped over next to me, still breathing. Why had Agent Nineteen done that? I didn’t really even have time to consider it further because just thirty or forty seconds after Nineteen had left, Agent Blue came downstairs.

  “Zero,” he said, kneeling next to me, “are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Good.”

  “What did you guys do to my brother?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. Are there more agents? I need to know!” his voice was short.

  “There are two more, down there,” I said, pointing toward the hallway.

  Blue leaned over both unconscious enemy operatives for a few moments. It was hard to tell from where I was sitting, but I was pretty sure he’d injected them each with something.

  “Carson? Carson, what is going on?” It was a panicked voice at the bottom of the stairs.

  My mom. Then she saw my unconscious brother and the strange guy with a machine gun lying next to me.

  “Oh, Austin!” she yelled and ran over to my brother. She knelt over him and touched his forehead. “What happened?”

  Agent Blue walked over to her and put a calm hand on her back. Before she or I could say anything more, with impossible and smooth quickness, he had a syringe in her neck and was pressing the plunger down. Like my brother, she slumped forward, unconscious in under a second.

  “What did you just do to her?” I nearly yelled, climbing to my feet. I seemed to finally be snapping out of whatever kind of daze I’d been in.

  “Is there anyone else home?” he asked, instead of answering my question.

  “Why would I tell you? So you can go inject them with some strange drug?”

  “Is there anyone else home, Zero? We don’t have time to argue!”

  His eyes beamed so intensely that it almost looked like they were on fire.

  “I won’t say until you tell me what that is,” I said.

  “This is just a mild tranquilizer,” he said. “They’ll wake back up in a few hours. It’s for their own protection.”

  “No, no one else is home,” I said. “My dad is away on a business trip.”

  “Come on, we need to get your brother and mother back to their beds,” he said.

  I helped him carry my mom and brother upstairs. We didn’t talk during either trip. Then he took out another syringe from a small black duffel bag in our entryway.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Remember that drug we gave to the janitor? This is the same thing. It will make sure they won’t remember any of this.”

  “I don’t know . . . ,” I started.

  “It’s safe. Or, safer than them knowing what happened here tonight. It’s in the interests of national security that no one in your family remembers this.”

  I nodded and then he went down the hall to their rooms. When he came back, he motioned for me to follow him back downstairs.

  “Help me get these guys to our van,” he said, motioning toward the enemy agents.

  “Is Agent Nineteen out looking for Olek?” I asked as we picked up the first one.

  Blue held the guy under the armpits and I had his legs. He was much heavier than my mom and brother had been.

  “Yes, he is,” he answered.

  “You’ll be able to track Olek somehow, right?”

  “Don’t worry about that right now, just help me,” he said as we started up the stairs.

  I didn’t say anything else as we hauled all three of the unconscious enemy agents to a black van parked in the alley behind my house. There was already a fourth guy in the back, which I assumed had been the guy I saw on my lawn when I’d looked out my bedroom window. After we finished getting the last guy in the van, I finally decided to ask the questions that had been bothering me since the attack began.

  “How did they get past the agents supposedly watching my house? And how did they know Olek was here? What happened? I thought the plan was working.” I rattled off the questions so fast that I had to take a few deep breaths when I finished.

  Agent Blue turned and looked at me for a few seconds. Then he started toward the driver side of the van.

  “Wait, aren’t you going to answer me?” I said, trailing him.

  “Just stay put and wait for instructions,” he finally said.

  “But . . .”

  “Zero,” he said. “Stay here and wait for instructions.”

  Then he got into the van and drove away. I stood there and watched the red taillights until they had turned the corner at the end of the alley. Then I went back inside my house. It didn’t feel much like my house anymore.

  I cleaned up downstairs to try and make it look as if nothing had gone on. Then I went to the dining room and sat at the table. How had this happened? How could Pancake Haus, or whoever those guys were, have found out Olek was here?

  CHAPTER 35

  AT SOME POINT I MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP AT THE TABLE because before I knew it I was being woken up by my mom.

  “Carson, are you okay? What are you doing up here?” she asked.

  I sat up and looked around. It was morning. She was already dressed and ready to leave for work.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t sleep and came up to get a snack. . . . I must have dozed off,” I said.

  “Well, you and Olek are going to be late for the bus. You better go get him up and get ready,” she said.

  “Yeah, totally,” I said, and then hurried downstairs.

  It wasn’t until I was in the shower that I realized that neither Nineteen nor Blue had come back during the night to give me any sort of instructions. Or tell me if they’d found Olek.

  So I just went to school like normal. I didn’t know what else to do. At every stop on the bus ride, I kept hoping Olek would get on. But he didn’t. And I suddenly had a very bad feeling that he maybe hadn’t gotten away after all.

  It was more than I could take. I hated even simple jobs like mowing the lawn or taking out the trash, so why had I ever agreed to take on a real adult job, one that related to things as important as other people’s safety and national security? The Pancake Haus had still gotten to Olek, probably, and I hadn’t been able to stop them.

  Olek was not at school that day. And as the day wore on, I realized I was more worried about Olek than anything else. I no longer cared that I’d failed. I didn’t even care about the terrorists going free or the Agency failing to do its job. I just wanted to know that Olek was okay.

  “Hey, I have to tell you something important,” Dillon said at lunch.

  “Not now, I had a rough night,” I said. Understatement of the year.

  “It’s really important,” he said.

  I seriously doubted it would be more important than what I’d been going through since the night before, but at the same time maybe it would be nice to have one of his ridiculous theories distract me for a few minutes. So I was just about to tell Dillon to go ahead and tell me whatever he needed to when I found the message in my pizza, underneath the rubbery layer of cheese.

  I quickly palmed it and put my hand under the table before peeking at the message:

  Meet us by the track immediately.

  “What’s wrong?” Danielle asked. “You look like you’re gonna blow chunks.”

  “Yeah, I don’t feel too well,” I said. “I gotta go, guys, sorry.”

  “But . . .” Dillon started.

  “I promise we’ll talk later,” I said, before basically running to the trash can to empty my tray.

  Both Agents Nineteen and Blue were at the track waiting for me. Neither of them smiled as I
approached, and I knew right then that the worst was true: Olek had not been found.

  I was barely able to keep walking. But somehow I made it over to them.

  “Zero,” Nineteen started, “nice work last night. You performed very well in a tough situation.”

  I nodded, unable to say anything. I wished they would just say it, get it over with quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. Then Agent Blue did just that.

  “Olek has been captured.”

  “How can you be so sure? He might just be hiding,” I said.

  “Because the Pancake Haus has released evidence that they have him,” Agent Nineteen said. “To notify interested bidders. The good news is that we know he is still alive for now, Zero. And we’re going to do everything we can to get him back.”

  “How do you know he’s still alive?” I asked hopefully.

  “Because the ITDO trial is scheduled for this evening,” Agent Nineteen said. “He’s no good to them dead. They released video footage time-stamped this morning, in which he was still alive and well. They need to use him as leverage to stop his parents from testifying, so we have until tonight to find where they are holding him. We have one possible lead, and we will explore it to its fullest extent.”

  “What’s the lead?” I asked.

  They looked at each other for a moment, exchanging one of those looks that told me what was coming next before they even had to say it.

  “We can’t tell you that,” Agent Nineteen said. “Because the fact of the matter is that we . . .”

  “We’re letting you go, Carson,” Agent Blue said flatly.

  I thought I detected a certain emphasis on my name. As if by saying Carson instead of Zero, he was driving the point home.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Olek has been compromised,” Agent Blue said. “They know who he is now, and so your prime directive is no longer part of the mission. We can take it from here. Please don’t blame yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” Agent Nineteen said. “You did a good job, but ultimately there’s nothing more you can do. We will contact you to collect any Agency-issued equipment within a few days.”

  I nodded. There was clearly no point in arguing.

  “Did you find out how they knew? I mean, I thought the plan was working,” I said.

  “We did, too,” Agent Blue said, shaking his head. But he offered nothing further.

  “We need to go,” Agent Nineteen said. “Consider yourself relieved of duty, Carson.”

  Then they turned and started jogging toward Swallow Nest Hill without answering my question. I assumed that they simply didn’t know and were maybe too embarrassed to say so. But either way, it wouldn’t have changed the facts:

  1. Olek had been captured.

  2. I had failed.

  3. There was nothing I could do to fix this.

  CHAPTER 36

  DILLON AND DANIELLE WERE WAITING FOR ME BY MY LOCKER after detention that day.

  “Hey guys,” I said, trying my best to act as normal as possible.

  “I need to tell you something,” Dillon said breathlessly.

  “I still think he’s nuts, but I have to admit I’ve never seen him so worked up about anything before,” Danielle said.

  “Okay,” I said, not really caring either way. “Let’s hear it then.”

  “The circus!” Dillon said almost before I’d even finished. “The circus, it’s, they’re . . . evil!”

  “Everyone knows that,” I said. “They abuse all the animals and make like forty clowns live in one small trailer together.”

  “It’s not just that,” he practically shouted. “They’re a front. I mean, the circus is a front for some terrorist cell or evil spy organization of some kind. And they’re planning something huge here in town. I just know they’re bent on world domination.”

  “What makes you think all of that?” I asked.

  “Because, I just know,” he said. “It all adds up. Remember a few weeks ago when I told you I saw a spy dressed as a lion tamer snooping around the water treatment plant?”

  “Yeah, so?” I said. “Seeing a lion tamer creeping around doesn’t mean that the circus is the front to an evil terrorist cell.”

  “But it’s not just that!” he said. “Hear me out. Then, there was the bearded lady I saw with a duffel bag of machine guns outside the Burger King near my house. Remember? Plus, I’ve noticed all these guys creeping around the school lately. At first they were wearing business suits, but then earlier this week a bunch of them were wearing maintenance uniforms of some kind.”

  I nodded. I did remember him mentioning seeing a bearded lady with guns outside of Burger King. Plus, he was right about the guys hanging around the school because I’d seen them, too.

  “What do the guys in uniforms have to do with the circus, though?” I asked.

  “Well, at first I thought they were posing as phone-company dudes. But then I realized why their uniforms looked so familiar to me. They’re the same ones that the janitors and ride-maintenance guys always wear at the circus every year! They’re unmistakable because they all have the same patch on them. The one with that MCMC logo on it. The same logo on the circus tickets the past few years.”

  “MCMC is the phone company, Dillon. It stands for Minnow Communications Management Company, remember?” I said.

  “I know, but that’s just a coincidence. The phone company might be MCMC technically, but they actually go by just MCC and their logo is way different. Look.”

  He held out a piece of paper. He’d printed a picture of the phone company logo. Next to that was a photocopy of a circus ticket. And next to that was a grainy photo of one of the maintenance guys who’d been around our school earlier that week. And he was right, the logo on the uniform was from the circus, not the phone company.

  “And there’s more,” he said. “That day of the goat prank I saw two guys abducting another guy on the corner of Sixteenth and Burdick. I saw it from the goat trailer after I released them.”

  I knew he wasn’t making that up, because I’d seen it, too. I realized that Dillon would have had a perfect view of that from where his cousin had parked the goat trailer in an alley across from the school.

  “How does that connect to the circus?” I asked, remembering that the guys had creepy white faces.

  “Well, the two guys had painted white faces,” Dillon said. “Which at first didn’t make sense to me. But then after I remembered the lion-tamer guy and added up all these other things, I realized that their painted faces fit right in.”

  I tried to swallow, but my throat didn’t seem to be working anymore.

  “Like clowns,” I said.

  Dillon grinned and then nodded. “Like clowns,” he agreed.

  He was right. Pancake Haus had been operating under the guise of the local circus all along. The very thing that I had come to see as the epitome of a boring North Dakotan existence had been the key to everything the whole time. Then I remembered Agent Nineteen telling me that they knew Pancake Haus had been operating in the area for at least a few weeks. Right around the same time the circus came to town. And this weekend was their last one before moving out, conveniently right after the ITDO trial scheduled for tonight.

  It all fit together perfectly.

  “You believe me this time, right?” Dillon said hopefully.

  “How would you guys like to go to the circus right now?” I asked.

  The biggest smile I’d ever seen spread across Dillon’s face. It was probably the first time I’d ever agreed to investigate one of his theories with him.

  “Are you nuts?” Danielle said. “You can’t possibly be serious! Don’t encourage him.”

  “I think he might be right this time,” I said.

  “What? Why? Just because some guys wearing uniforms with the circus management company’s logo on it were at the school one day? That doesn’t mean anything!”

  “Maybe not, but maybe it does,” I said. “You can’t know for sure either.” />
  Dillon looked too happy to even be capable of speaking. I don’t think he’d ever heard someone else defending a theory of his before. I could only imagine how awesome that must have felt.

  “So, are you coming with us or not?” Dillon asked her.

  Danielle sighed. “Okay, fine.”

  She even let a grin sneak onto her face. As much as she got fed up with Dillon’s theories, she still loved a good mystery and fun shenanigans as much as we did. Even if she thought it was all made up.

  Except that I knew that this time it wasn’t made-up shenanigans.

  We rode the school bus to my house so I could get a few things that I thought might come in handy. Then we would head toward the city fairgrounds, where the circus was held every year.

  When we got to my place, the first thing I did was find my Agency transponder and press the red button. The problem was that I had no idea when they’d respond. I didn’t even know if they were still paying attention to my transponder. Should I wait there for them to contact me and explain what was going on, or just head toward the circus on my own?

  As I debated this, I grabbed my backpack full of gadgets and then went to the bathroom to reload and strap the smokescreen gun to my wrist so Dillon and Danielle wouldn’t see it. I reloaded the tranquilizer pen and also strapped on the false palms. After all, there was really no point in holding back.

  By the time I was ready to go, there was still no sign of any Agency personnel. But it was already almost five o’clock. There just wasn’t time to wait any longer. I’d have to do this on my own. The ITDO trial was just a few hours away now. I might already be too late as it was.

  Besides, Agency participation might only look suspicious and tip off the Pancake Haus if Olek was actually being held somewhere on the fairgrounds. It was likely incredibly irresponsible of me to put my friends in danger like this, but at the same time what could possibly be more unlikely than a kid secret agent? Well, besides a monkey secret agent that is? The answer is three kid secret agents. Having Dillon and Danielle with me instead of trained agents might be the only thing that would help keep my cover as we looked around. I’d be able to infiltrate the circus much better without the Agency. This was my fault, my problem, and my choice. I was going to make it right again.