The Doublecross

by Jackson Pearce

  “Shhh,” I said, grateful that the agent who’d just walked by had had headphones on. “But . . . you’re right. I’m just down the hall if you need me, okay? I’ll leave my door unlocked.” Kennedy nodded and then hugged me tightly before disappearing into her miserable-looking room.

  I went down to my own room, which was at the end of the boys’ half of the hall. Just as I was opening my door, I heard shuffling upstairs. I looked up and frowned. I knew there were more dorms up there, but they’d always just been used for storage. I glanced down the hall to make sure no one would catch me, and then I snuck into the connecting stairwell and up to the next level. Once there, I pressed my ear to the door. Nothing. I dared to push the door open.

  “Hale Jordan!” a woman snapped. I leaped backward, nearly tumbling down the stairs in surprise.

  “Mrs. Quaddlebaum!” I said. “I’m sorry—I just heard someone up here and thought I’d look—”

  “You’re supposed to be in your room,” she said, folding her arms.

  “Well, yeah, but I heard someone up here and . . . I was just curious.” I didn’t dare take my eyes off Mrs. Quaddlebaum, but with my peripheral vision I could sort of see the hall behind her. The lights were all on, and the room had the lemony scent of a space freshly cleaned. Why were they cleaning this level? There were plenty of rooms downstairs.

  “Just clearing out some rooms,” she said sternly. “Now go on. I’ll let you slide on being out past curfew, since I’m assuming you just didn’t know the dorm rules. It is your first day in the dorm, right?”

  I nodded.

  Mrs. Quaddlebaum pointed, and I began to retreat down the steps. As I left, she called after me. “We’re doing everything we can to find your parents, Hale, so hopefully you won’t be in those dorms for long,” she said in a rare show of something resembling sympathy.

  I turned and gave her a fake smile even the Body Language Analysis teacher wouldn’t have been able to see through. “I’m sure I won’t be.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The following day I lost the race at the end of class, as per usual.

  Walter jeered me along with the others, as per usual.

  And I spent a lot of time thinking about Groundcover, as per usual.

  Otter, who was still bitter about the whole hospital thing, sent me out to dry-clean all his heavy winter coats (I was almost positive they weren’t even his. I think he just collected them from the Wardrobe Department because he knew they’d practically break my arm off when I carried them to the dry cleaner). It was obnoxious, but at least it meant I had a legitimate excuse to leave SRS instead of sneaking out again. Clatterbuck, dressed as a farmer, picked me up in a truck filled to the brim with watermelons.

  “Isn’t Oleander going to be mad that you keep spending The League’s little bit of money on things like costumes and watermelons?”

  Clatterbuck shrugged. “She doesn’t care what I spend the money on, Hale, so long as it means keeping you safe. You’re our most important asset.”

  I blushed, hating myself for it, and said, “To be totally fair, I’m your only asset.”

  “No! We still have a field agent out in Japan. I mean, we haven’t heard from him in seventeen years, and we’re pretty sure he sold off the agency car to pay some gambling debts, but . . . he’s there.”

  At League headquarters, Oleander and I wondered about Groundcover together for a while, and then Ben showed me a few new devices he’d made for my utility belt—which he’d also finished the auto-close clips for, so it now fit around my waist nicely. There was the RoBEN, a little windup bird that delivered a high-decibel shriek that could shatter even bulletproof glass, and the HellBENder, which he didn’t much explain beyond telling me that it was only to be used as a last resort. He also had more jewelry com units, one each for Kennedy and Walter.

  “So, these really are the only ones The League has that will work given how far underground SRS is. I did upgrade them a little though.”

  “It’s going to be hard to sell Walter on wearing earrings,” I said. “But thanks, Ben.”

  “No problem,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “Beatrix helped, though. She had to recode part of the old software.”

  “Where is Beatrix anyhow?” Oleander asked.

  “I don’t know. She took Uncle Stan’s wallet to go get sodas earlier, but that was ages ago,” Ben answered. Clatterbuck patted his pants pocket and looked alarmed to see his wallet was missing. “She didn’t pickpocket you—you left it on the counter when you changed into your farmer overalls.”

  “Oh! I figured farmers don’t carry wallets when they’re working in the field,” Clatterbuck told me.

  Ben shouted Beatrix’s name, and we continued to pore over the blueprints. When she didn’t come, he went upstairs to the cafeteria and then down to the gym to look for her. When she wasn’t in either, all four of us went searching.

  “Maybe she’s in the . . .” Clatterbuck finally said, giving Ben a mysterious look.

  “Should we show them?” Ben answered. “If she’s not there, she’ll be mad we showed them without her.”

  “I’ll be mad if you don’t show me whatever you’re talking about,” Oleander said, folding her arms, a serious look on her face.

  Ben and Clatterbuck didn’t seem particularly happy about it, but they led Oleander and me upstairs to the door of the mission control room Oleander had shown me the day I broke in. I remembered it well enough—full of old computers and abandoned chairs and enough dust bunnies to make a pterodactyl nest. Clatterbuck and Ben grinned at each other and then swept the door open.

  “Whoa,” Oleander and I said in unison.

  The chairs were gone, as were the dust bunnies. The old computers appeared to have been fixed up and fused together, much like Beatrix’s Right Hand, and were now displaying a projected map on the back wall. There were several stations constructed out of desks, and the mission director’s platform appeared to have been repainted.

  “We fixed it!” Ben said jubilantly. “It was supposed to be a surprise for after we found your parents, Hale. We thought maybe they could come here and we could start running actual missions again.”

  “This is amazing,” Oleander said.

  She was right. I mean, sure, it still looked a little shabby compared to SRS’s control room, but . . . this place was real. It wasn’t built on lies and tricks and physical exams. There was still a sort of dark place in my heart, the reminder that when all was said and done, SRS wouldn’t be my home anymore. But seeing a real mission control room here at The League . . .

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  “Well, not exactly. Because Beatrix hasn’t programmed those computers yet. And also, she’s not here,” Ben said, shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”

  Clatterbuck and Oleander glanced at each other warily, each trying to gauge how serious the other thought this whole thing was. I wasn’t worried—Beatrix was tiny, so it seemed pretty plausible she was tucked away somewhere, totally absorbed in some sort of computer-genius-type work. I was about to suggest we check the upper empty floors, when Clatterbuck suddenly grabbed for his ear. Someone was talking to him over his com unit.

  “Whoa. Slow down—actually, hang on. Ben, can you transfer this to the overhead speaker yet?”

  “Sure thing,” Ben said. He ran to one of the stations and flipped a few switches up. There was a sharp buzzing noise, but then . . .

  “Hale? Are you there? Can anyone hear me?” Walter’s voice boomed through the overhead speaker. Ben winced and turned it down a little.

  “Yeah! What’s going on?” I called out.

  “Well, I was on my way to do an extra jujitsu session, and I heard my mom’s voice from down the hall. So I was just curious, and I stick my head around the corner to look, and she’s leading this line of people—kids our age. New kids, not SRS kids.”

  “New kids? Like, strangers? Why are strangers—”

  “One of them is Beatrix, Hale! Beatrix
is here.”

  “What do you mean she’s there?” I asked.

  “I mean she’s here! She’s with them!”

  Ben and Clatterbuck spun around to look at me. My mouth dropped open, but my mind immediately began to whir. Beatrix. Beatrix was at SRS, and we had to get her out. We had to plan.

  I said, “Okay. They somehow must have caught her helping me. Maybe her program at the hospital—”

  Walter cut me off, “Hale, this can’t be you. If they knew she was a part of the whole doublecross, then things would be a lot . . . um . . . worse. Plus, why bring in a dozen new kids if Beatrix is the problem? I think this is Operation Evergreen—I recognize one of the kids whose file we stole from the sports academy. The gymnast, I think. And one of the other kids I remember seeing back on my first mission at that chess tournament—”

  “They’re recruiting,” Oleander said suddenly.

  The three of us spun to face her. She puffed her lips for a moment, like she couldn’t believe this hadn’t occurred to her before. “SRS has always been immensely private. They’ve ensured loyalty by having families working there. But eventually everyone needs new blood. So they collected hospital records. Files from sports academies.”

  “Chess championship information,” I said, remembering Walter’s first mission.

  “Exactly. Everything you’ve done for Operation Evergreen has involved tracking exceptional kids.”

  “Beatrix said she saw her files getting transferred to SRS . . . The doctors must have written down that she was a computer genius, like they wrote down stuff about Clifton Harris . . .” I felt guilty for not seeing this before, but how could I have? SRS never brought in new people.

  “Are you two saying they’re going to turn my sister into an SRS agent?” Ben asked.

  Walter crackled over the speaker again. “Your sister and about fifteen others, I think. Let me go—I’m going to try to follow them and find out more. I’ll keep an eye on her, Ben. Don’t worry.” Walter’s voice vanished, replaced by the steady sound of static.

  I took a deep breath. “He’s right, Ben. Don’t worry. Beatrix isn’t going to become an agent, because we’re going to get her out,” I said.

  “We can’t,” Oleander said.

  Ben and Clatterbuck’s mouths dropped.

  “Not yet,” Oleander continued, holding out her palms like it might calm Ben and his uncle down. “She’s fine. They’re not hurting her. Hale, you sneak out of SRS all the time—but they know you, and they trust you. No one blinks an eye if they don’t see you for a few hours, because they just assume you’re studying or at home or the library. But if a new recruit vanishes? They’re going to notice quickly that she’s gone. Then they’re going to want to know how she escaped. Then they’re going to check video feeds. They’re going to see Beatrix leaving, but they’re also going to see you and Walter and Kennedy going and coming way too often to ignore. The whole doublecross will be blown. We won’t get the chance to work out Groundcover, and we definitely won’t get any closer to finding your parents, Hale.”

  “So you’re saying we just leave her there?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and, from the looks on Clatterbuck’s and Ben’s faces, neither could they.

  “I’m saying, Hale, that this might be our only chance. The odds of you breaking Beatrix out of SRS without revealing yourself, Walter, or Kennedy are very slim. Once you’re gone, you’re gone, and we’ll never get a chance to look at that place from the inside again. If she’s not in any real, present danger, I think we should wait it out a bit, just until we’ve sorted out Groundcover. The three of you can look after her, and if anything goes wrong, you have my word that we’ll go in and get her.” She turned now to Clatterbuck and Ben. “SRS are better than we are. There’re more of them, they’re better funded, they’re better trained, and they’re better equipped. Hale’s doublecross is the only card we have to play. If we let it go too soon, we’ll have nothing.”

  “But they’ll have my niece,” Clatterbuck said.

  “Say the word, Stan, and we’ll get her,” Oleander answered, her voice heavy.

  “We should ask her!” Ben said before his uncle could respond. We turned to him. He took a deep breath, and continued. “Let’s just ask Beatrix what she wants to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  By the time I got back to SRS, everyone was talking about the new kids. Who they were, where they’d come from, why Fishburn thought we needed new people. The junior agents were especially prickly about the entire thing.

  “I’m just saying, we’ve been doing this since we were born. How are some random kids going to do better than us?” I heard a girl whispering loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Maybe that’s the thing, though. Maybe some random kids actually are better than us,” another said, worried.

  “No way,” another said.

  “I heard they’re from the CIA.”

  “Someone told me the FBI trained them.”

  “You know MI6? They’re from a secret division called MI9.”

  “That’s impossible. I heard them talking. They’re not British.”

  “You don’t think a spy trained by MI9 could fake an American accent?”

  Even the adults were swapping rumors. In every version, SRS had recruited the kids or rescued them from terrible homes or orphanages or, according to one of the Foreheads, off a sinking ship. I didn’t hear a shred of the truth—or anything about Operation Evergreen.

  Mrs. Quaddlebaum was guarding the new recruits carefully; people could talk to them, but only for a few seconds at a time, and then we were hurried off. I finally saw Beatrix, whose face lit up a little too much when she saw me. I lifted my eyebrows, and she quickly dropped her grin.

  “Hi—you’re new here?” I asked warmly. She and the others were in line near the nurse’s office, apparently getting blood drawn and their tonsils checked. Beatrix was toward the back of the line, leaning against the wall. As promised, she didn’t look particularly scared and certainly wasn’t hurt.

  “Yep, today. Are you one of the spies? We’ve been recruited to become spies too, just like on TV. We’re gonna be heroes!” she said all this quickly, giving me as much information as she dared with Mrs. Quaddlebaum so close by.

  I gave her an appreciative nod before saying, “Sort of. I’m a spy in training. Are you guys staying in the dorms? In the brand-new rooms?”

  “I think so—they look new, anyway. The whole hall is just us,” she said, and then gestured to the other recruits.

  “Oh yeah, which room did you get?”

  “I think it’s . . . thirty-three thirty-seven?”

  I sucked air through my teeth. “Oh, tough break. That one’s haunted. Should’ve gone with thirty-three thirty-four.”

  “Hale Jordan,” Mrs. Quaddlebaum said, walking over. I knew she’d been listening in. “There is not a single place in this building that’s haunted. Stop picking on the poor girl. Don’t worry, Bernice—”

  “Beatrix,” Beatrix said.

  Mrs. Quaddlebaum waved her hands like Beatrix’s name was a matter of opinion. “Right. Don’t listen to him. Hale, I expected better from you, picking on a classmate!”

  I badly wanted to ask her where her lectures were when Walter was picking on me, but I figured this really wasn’t the time. “She’s joining our classes then?”

  “Well, she’s not. She’s going to join the HITS, I believe. Right? Oh, there are too many of you. I can’t remember who is doing what. Come on, everyone! We’re going to go look at one of the Explosives classrooms now, then we’ll be done with the tour and get some dinner. Let’s move along!” She sounded cheery, which was weird and made it feel like she was Mrs. Quaddlebaum in shallow cover as Mrs. Cheery Quaddlebaum.

  She put an arm around Beatrix and led her away quickly, back to the others. Beatrix glanced over her shoulder, and I mouthed room three-three-three-four. I couldn’t tell if she understood my plan, but I didn’t have the chance to work it out, s
ince they disappeared around the corner.

  That night Walter and I sat in Kennedy’s dorm room—room 2334—which was still sparse and sad-looking. I could tell the whole place made Walter feel awkward about how he was going to get to go home to his own bedroom, with his mom, in his own apartment, mainly because that was how I would’ve felt, visiting the dorm kids.

  “What if Beatrix didn’t understand?” Kennedy sighed, fiddling with one of the fake diamonds on her League com unit. I’d given Walter his too, but he’d quickly pocketed it like it was just too gross to look at. Ben had hurriedly set up a final one for me to give to Beatrix as well.

  “I don’t know,” I answered Kennedy. “We’ll have to figure out another way to talk with her alone—”

  A knocking noise stopped us—a noise coming from overhead. I grinned and crossed my fingers that I wasn’t just misinterpreting the sound of someone arranging furniture. Walter hoisted Kennedy up onto his shoulders (where she wanted to stop and practice some sort of cheerleading move). She popped out one of the ceiling tiles and passed it down to me.

  Walter handed her the laser saw I’d stolen earlier from the tactical supply closet, and we all cringed as it buzzed to life. Kennedy sliced through the floor of the room above. She pushed it up and, to our relief, we saw Beatrix above, helping lift the floor out. Room 3334—right above Kennedy’s room, 2334.

  “Hi, guys!” she whispered, waving down at us. She set the piece of her floor aside, and Kennedy hopped down. It took a little more convincing for Beatrix to jump down into Walter’s arms, but she eventually did it, looking very pleased with herself as he caught her squarely. I hugged her tightly as soon as she stepped down.

  “I’m okay,” she assured me when I let her go. “Hale! I’m fine, I promise. Really good idea about the ghost, by the way. I told Mrs. Quaddlebaum I was scared, then cried until she let me switch with the girl who had this room.”

  “Oh yeah, she hates crying,” Walter said sagely. Beatrix plopped down on Kennedy’s bed and, though she didn’t say it aloud, I could tell even she thought this room was entirely un-Kennedy.