Crisis Zero
Page 1
DEDICATION
For my mom
CONTENTS
Dedication
Chapter 1: Principal Street-Fighting Tournaments
Chapter 2: The Arby’s Interrogation
Chapter 3: Permanent Neutral Face
Chapter 4: The Classics
Chapter 5: The Ghosts of TV Game Shows
Chapter 6: Kleen(EX) Getaways
Chapter 7: Urine—A Spy’s Best Kept Secret Weapon
Chapter 8: The Secret Sauce
Chapter 9: A Ticker Tape Parade in Ghostown
Chapter 10: Luke Skywalker and the Bionic Woman
Chapter 11: Radioactive Mushroom Rampages and Chicken Feet Rain
Chapter 12: It’s Never the Swiss
Chapter 13: Carson-Faced Sandwich
Chapter 14: The Erik Hill Middle School Trailblazer
Chapter 15: Little Chicago
Chapter 16: Mission Phase One—Eliminate All Steak Sauce
Chapter 17: Try My Raspberry Toe Jam
Chapter 18: A Fresh Start
Chapter 19: Good Locks Hide Good Treasures in the Valley of the Fold
Chapter 20: Larger Than Life
Chapter 21: Growing Gills
Chapter 22: Always Put Money on Family
Chapter 23: Handcuffed in Detention
Chapter 24: A Meeting of Hooded Figures in the Woods Plotting Creepy Ritualistic Things Better Left Unsaid
Chapter 25: Cursing Your Ancestors
Chapter 26: Can Human Teeth Chew Through Human Bones?
Chapter 27: Loaner Socks
Chapter 28: A Jack Daniel’s Shower
Chapter 29: Does “Taking Care” of Grandma Mean We Have to Kill Her?
Chapter 30: The Agency Is All
Chapter 31: The Ugly Truth
Chapter 32: Ginny Agricole, the Rat-Deer-Pig
Chapter 33: The Organization of Sad Clowns with Awesome Beards
Chapter 34: Deep Star 7
Chapter 35: Sentient Tires That Explode Heads
Chapter 36: Things Better Left Unsaid
Chapter 37: What Could Be Worse Than Torture and Death? Junior Will Tell You
Chapter 38: Who Is Betraying Who Anymore?
Chapter 39: Finally, the End
Chapter 40: Me, Alone
Chapter 41: Nebraska Is Not the Worst Part of Nebraska
Chapter 42: The Old Reverse Santa Claus Trick
Chapter 43: Professional Faller
Chapter 44: The Dirt Mall
Chapter 45: Hop to It, Bruce Derns
Chapter 46: The Truth Behind All Conspiracy Theories
Chapter 47: A Thank-You Is in Order
Chapter 48: Baloney Steeped Kool-Aid
Chapter 49: When Being Right All Along Is Oddly Unsatisfying
Chapter 50: The Exodus Program
Chapter 51: Rat Rivers and Dirt Malls
Chapter 52: More Silent Conversations
Chapter 53: Cough Talk
Chapter 54: Stop Saying BOOM!
Chapter 55: Hypothetical Bodies at Old Augustine
Chapter 56: A Handheld Medlock
Chapter 57: Using the New to Find the Old
Chapter 58: The Ultimate Trust Test
Chapter 59: Jurassic Park Is the Best Movie Ever
Chapter 60: The Fields of Fire
Chapter 61: Interceptor, Sightseer, and the Pushman
Chapter 62: The Congratulations Boom-Barrow
Chapter 63: Someone Said Boom
Chapter 64: The Fourth Party Arrives
Chapter 65: When a Two Percent Chance of Survival Sounds Promising
Chapter 66: Nobody Wants to Die in the Rat River
Chapter 67: What Putting the Pal in Principal Really Means
Chapter 68: Agent Zero Is Dead
Epilogue: Six Months Later
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1
PRINCIPAL STREET-FIGHTING TOURNAMENTS
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” PRINCIPAL GOMEZ shouted at the men who had just barged into his office.
I had been four seconds away from getting expelled from middle school, and so I can’t say this interruption was an unwelcome one. But I still wasn’t sure if I should be happy or scared to see four dudes who looked like secret agents surrounding me. After all, I was something of a secret agent myself (codename: Zero). It’s a long story, but the point is, it takes one to know one—and these guys definitely weren’t just members of the school board or a group of angry rival principals here to partake in a Principal Street-Fighting Tournament.
One of the men held out a badge.
“Mr. Gomez, I’m Agent Loften, National Security Bureau,” he said. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of treason, terrorism, espionage, and activities deemed dangerous to the United States of America.”
My jaw swung open and I looked at Mr. Gomez in shock. He met my stare but said nothing. Was his lack of a reaction an admission of guilt? Or was he simply as confused as I was? I couldn’t be sure. But I did know I was pretty relieved knowing that the agents weren’t there for me.
“Son,” another NSB agent said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “we’re going to have to ask you to go back to class now.”
I nodded without saying anything and stood up. Mr. Gomez’s wide, unblinking eyes never left me as I backed out of his office in a daze.
“But he’s expelled,” Mr. Gomez mumbled. “He’s finally getting expelled.”
The NSB agents ignored him as if he wasn’t even speaking at all.
Just as I was leaving the office, I saw Agent Loften placing handcuffs on Mr. Gomez. Then I was out in the hallway, still too stunned to do anything but just stand there and stare at the now closed administration office door.
Could my bungling principal, Mr. Gomez, really have been an enemy agent all this time? That didn’t seem possible. But then again, me becoming a secret agent and saving the world twice in less than a few months wouldn’t have seemed possible at the start of seventh grade, either. Yet that’s exactly what had happened, so I really couldn’t rule out anything.
The one thing I did know was that the sudden arrest of my principal by the National Security Bureau had to somehow be related to the government agency I worked for, the one so top secret that its name was classified even to its own operatives. The agency with headquarters miles underground, right below my school. The very one who I’d now helped thwart the plans of an evil psychopath and former agent named Mule Medlock twice. Most recently by preventing him from getting a deadly virus called Romero that could have ushered in a near apocalyptic outbreak.
Either way, I knew I’d find out eventually. And I also suspected I’d once again find myself mixed up with whatever was going on. That just seemed to be how things worked for me.
I’m Carson Fender, aka the retired Prank Master, aka Agent Zero, aka both the World’s Greatest Hero and Screw-up, all in one, and I always seem to find myself smack-dab in the middle of trouble one way or another.
I couldn’t see why this would turn out any differently.
CHAPTER 2
THE ARBY’S INTERROGATION
I WASN’T QUITE SURE WHAT TO DO AT FIRST. MR. GOMEZ HAD brought me down to his office to expel me from school. He’d made that much very clear. Was I still expelled now that he’d been arrested? Should I go back to class? Or just keep standing there in the hallway until I got trampled during the period break?
Going back to class ultimately seemed like the best option. Maybe if I just went to social studies class like normal and pretended nothing was wrong, it would be like nothing at all unusual had happened that morning. Nobody would even know I was technically supposed to be expelled.
So that’s what I did. I simply went back to class.
But acting normal was harder than I expected. I didn’t remember a single word anybody said to me the rest of the morning. I was too busy thinking about Principal Gomez. About the possibility that he was actually a secret agent. That he had been the entire time I had been working for the Agency. Could it be a coincidence?
By lunchtime, the news had gotten out. Several classrooms had gotten a front row view out their windows of the NSB putting a handcuffed Mr. Gomez into the back of a black sedan that morning. Though nobody seemed to quite have all of the facts right. Take my best friend, Dillon, for instance. He greeted me at our usual table with his own theory on why Mr. Gomez had been taken away in handcuffs.
“I knew he’d get caught eventually!” Dillon said excitedly as I sat down in between him and his twin sister, Danielle.
She gave me a look that said she also suspected this was related to the Agency somehow. During my last mission, she had intervened and saved me and my mentor, Agent Nineteen (and in doing so, the world). As a result, the Agency also brought her in to work for them. Her codename was Atlas. Given the fact that we had known each other our entire lives and the fact that we were the only ones each of us could really trust, I couldn’t think of a better partner to have.
“Get caught doing what?” I asked.
“Mr. Gomez was an alien in hiding,” Dillon said, his voice lowering to show he was serious. “And those men in black suits were the Men in Black.”
“Like from the Will Smith movies?” our friend Ethan asked. “That’s not very original.”
“No, not like in the movies,” Dillon said as if this was the most obvious fact in the world. “Well, I mean, sort of like the movies. Hollywood has to get inspiration from somewhere. But that movie is not at all what the real Men in Black are like!”
Most kids would think Dillon was just joking around, but we all knew better. That was the thing about Dillon; he had a crazy conspiracy theory for everything. To him, the world was never as it seemed. Everyone we met had a hidden agenda, everything we saw was hiding something. An apple falling from a tree on a summer day wasn’t just an apple falling from a tree. To him, that was surely the start of the Great Apple Rebellion. The beginning of a war in which genetically altered apples finally rise up against their human slavers and take over the world. Yes, this is actually something he said once when we saw an apple fall to the ground in a park last summer.
“An alien, huh?” I said. “Isn’t that a little cliché? My principal is an alien. I think there’s already, like, fourteen books, movies, and TV shows out with that same plot.”
“Well, see, that’s the thing,” Dillon said, his voice rising again as he got more excited about his theory. “That’s the point! That’s what they want you to believe.”
“So he’s not an alien, then?” Danielle asked.
All of Dillon’s friends, his sister especially, knew it was just better to humor him and let him get it all out rather than try to argue logically or reason with him.
“Of course not!” Dillon nearly shouted, getting so worked up he was standing now. “That’d be ridiculous. In reality, Principal Gomez is a Galaxy Ranger, and the men in suits were enemy aliens just disguised as Men in Black. Right now, as we speak, old Gomez is probably being tortured in some secret alien lair. I bet it’s the Arby’s. I always knew there was something off about the Arby’s on Buchanan Street. You know what I mean.”
Normally I’d have laughed at Dillon’s theory. Usually I found them funny. But this time, since I actually suspected that I sort of knew the truth behind Gomez getting arrested, or at least part of the truth, I was too worried about what it all might mean to play along.
But I forced a laugh anyway, so Dillon wouldn’t suspect that I knew more than I did.
“You know, most kids just think he was arrested by the FBI for drug smuggling or something,” Danielle said.
“Most kids are wrong,” Dillon said quietly, sitting down again. “As usual.”
“I agree with Dillon,” our friend Katie chimed in. “I kind of like the idea of Mr. Gomez getting his face sliced off by an Arby’s roast beef machine.”
“I heard it was just unpaid parking tickets,” our friend Adie said. “Hundreds of them.”
“Secret agent–looking dudes don’t show up in black SUVs to arrest people for unpaid parking tickets,” Zack countered.
“Yeah, if there are, like, a thousand of them, they do,” Adie shot back.
And so started our table’s debate over what had happened to Mr. Gomez—very likely mirroring what was happening at every single table in the school cafeteria at that moment. But the truth was that I wasn’t really listening to them. Instead, I was focused on my school lunch. Not on actually eating it of course, that’d be gross. I was more interested in searching for a secret message. That’s how the Agency contacted me at school: secret messages from Agent Chum Bucket snuck into my school lunch. And I’d say our own principal getting arrested for being some sort of secret agent merited some sort of message. Was Gomez really an enemy agent? Can we be sure those guys in suits were even with the NSB? Had the Agency framed Gomez to keep me from getting expelled?
I focused on my lasagna, sure there was going to be a message inside it from the Agency. The other kids at the table were probably wondering what the heck I was doing with my lunch, but I didn’t care. I needed answers.
After completely dismantling it, I found nothing but thick, gooey noodles, orange sauce, and a white paste that somehow passed for cheese. No information from the Agency whatsoever. And there was no way I could just go ask either of my two mentors, Agent Nineteen or Agent Blue, who normally doubled as teachers at the school for their covers. They hadn’t been back to school since my last mission had spiraled out of control and resulted in Agent Nineteen getting shot a few times and Agent Blue bitten by a poisonous snake. They were still recovering from their injuries.
I was seconds away from picking up my tray and throwing it across the cafeteria in a fit of frustration when Danielle suddenly grabbed my arm underneath the table.
I looked at her and she motioned with her eyes for me to look down. In her other hand, on her lap, she held a small marinara-covered slip of paper.
AGENT ZERO AND AGENT ATLAS: COME TO THE SHED. IMMEDIATELY.
CHAPTER 3
PERMANENT NEUTRAL FACE
NORMALLY WHEN I NEEDED TO SNEAK AWAY FROM OUR LUNCH table for secret agent business, I’d have to make up some crazy excuse. Partly because Dillon was always so suspicious of everything that everybody did, and partly because it wasn’t like me to suddenly bail on lunch with friends. But that day it was easy. Our table, and the cafeteria in general, were so consumed with arguments speculating about Mr. Gomez that Danielle and I simply stood up and left.
“Do they always contact you that way?” Danielle asked as we walked quickly down the sledding hill adjacent to the practice football field.
“In school lunches, yeah,” I said, a little offended they’d sent her the message and not me. “Agent Chum Bucket is one of the cafeteria workers.”
“So that’s why you’ve been suddenly leaving during lunch so much lately!” she said.
I grinned and shrugged. This was technically Danielle’s first school day as an official secret agent. It felt kind of nice not being the new kid anymore.
When we got to the school’s maintenance shed, which hid the entrance to Agency headquarters, I was shocked to see that none of our usual contacts were there to meet us. Not Agent Blue, Agent Nineteen, or Director Isadoris. Instead, it was some woman I’d never seen before.
She was young—younger than my mom, anyway, but still an adult. Maybe as old as a college student, or perhaps just a little older, it was hard to tell, especially since her expression was completely blank. If she hadn’t been standing on her feet and moving, she probably could have passed for a corpse. She had long blond hair and dark eyes, and wore a gray business suit that matched her unflinc
hing face.
“I’m Agent Smiley,” she said as we approached.
I almost laughed at her codename. But decided it might come off as kind of rude if it wasn’t meant to be a joke.
“Uh, hi,” I said.
Danielle said nothing. I could tell how nervous she was without even glancing at her. Danielle liked to help me with my pranks and was pretty cool under pressure. But at the same time, she’d always been the most responsible of the three of us, the one with enough sense to talk Dillon and me out of our craziest ideas. So all of this risky secret agent business was still likely hard for her to take in.
“Director Isadoris sent me here with an assignment for you two,” Agent Smiley said, getting right down to business.
“Where are Agents Blue and Nineteen?” I asked.
Her expression didn’t change. She gave away nothing. Her mouth barely even moved when she spoke. And her voice was more monotone and robotic than Betsy’s voice. (In case you don’t remember, Betsy was the talking, self-destructing data device that had gotten me mixed up in this mess to begin with.)
“They are both still in the medical bay,” Agent Smiley explained. “It’s going to be two more days, at the very least, before they’re ready to return to action, so to speak.”
That seemed reasonable enough to me.
“Are we going, uh, to your headquarters?” Danielle asked, speaking for the first time.
“No,” Agent Smiley said. “There isn’t time. This mission requires immediate action.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. But I said nothing, having learned it was best to just keep quiet and let Agent Smiley explain. Asking questions Agent Smiley was going to answer anyway would only waste what little time Danielle and I had to complete whatever crazy mission they had lined up for us.
“As you know, Principal Gomez has been arrested in connection with suspected traitorous activity,” she continued. “We need you to retrieve Principal Gomez’s computer hard drive from his office as soon as possible.”
“So he really was some sort of enemy agent?” I asked. “Or do you need his files because he was one of our agents, and you don’t want all of his top secret data to get into the wrong hands?”