Crisis Zero

by Chris Rylander

  “No, he has no affiliation with any agency whatsoever,” Agent Smiley said. “The truth is, we really don’t know yet why he was detained by the NSB. That’s why we need you to retrieve his files. We’d like to find out what he’s being brought in for. The Agency and the NSB don’t exactly . . . Well, let’s just say there is very little cooperation between the two agencies, even at the highest levels.”

  I gave her a quizzical look. It was hard to believe that two agencies on the same side, working for the same government, couldn’t manage to work together from time to time.

  “Over ninety-nine percent of NSB personnel don’t even know the Agency exists,” Agent Smiley said. “Regardless: Principal Gomez’s arrest by the NSB as an enemy combatant in our jurisdiction, even if it is erroneous, is something we cannot consider a coincidence. We need to know everything we can. As I said, we simply can’t walk into Mr. Gomez’s office and ask the NSB to hand over the files. At present, two NSB agents are guarding the data while it awaits proper extraction and transport. One agent is stationed inside Mr. Gomez’s office and one just outside. We need you two to get inside and retrieve his hard drive.”

  “Why us?” I asked, even though I suspected I already knew the answer.

  “You can get close to the area in question without arousing suspicion, being students.”

  “What about the other teacher agents?” I asked, remembering that Agent Nineteen had told me once that he and Agent Blue weren’t the only secret agent school employees. “Surely they’re better equipped for this sort of mission.”

  “There are no other agents posing as teachers,” Agent Smiley said. “As for Agent Chum Bucket, what looks more suspicious—a school cafeteria worker loitering outside the administration office after lunch or a known troublemaking student getting himself into more trouble?”

  She made a good point. But my mind was still reeling from her casual revelation that there were no other agents at the school until Agents Nineteen and Blue came back. It was now just Danielle, Chum Bucket, and me.

  “Remember, all we need is his computer’s hard drive,” Agent Smiley said, checking her watch. “And don’t get caught.”

  I nodded. Danielle had been pretty quiet, and I glanced her way, just to see how she was taking this in. Her face was pale, almost white. She was either seconds from barfing or keeling over dead. Or both. I didn’t want her to feel like she was being forced into this.

  “What if we say we’re out, that we don’t want to be a part of this anymore?” I asked, more to give Danielle a way out than for myself.

  Agent Smiley’s face remained an unmovable wax mold. It revealed nothing.

  “Then you’re out,” she said coldly.

  “Just like that?” I asked.

  Agent Smiley nodded. “How effective can an agent be if he or she is unwilling? If he or she isn’t completing assignments with real purpose? But I’ve read your files, Agent Zero. You have more natural talent as a spy than most we’ve seen—and we’ve seen plenty. And I don’t think you, or Agent Atlas, would turn your backs on this Agency or this country. Not now, not with Medlock still operating somewhere nearby. That has become our lone acting directive: eliminating Mule Medlock before he completely compromises the Agency and our national security. But even still, if you do want out, then we will turn to our secondary plan, which is simply to take out the NSB agents guarding the office and go in by force to get what we need.”

  If I had ever considered walking away, I certainly wasn’t going to now. She was right. I had tried to go back to a normal life a few months before—going to class, taking tests, pulling the occasional prank. It hadn’t worked. This was the only thing I wanted to do. But did Danielle feel the same way?

  She swallowed. “I’m in,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Me, too.”

  “So, we obviously need a prank, right?” Danielle asked me as we walked back toward the school. “A diversion.”

  We both knew we had just a few hours before school let out. A few hours before it would be too late to successfully complete our mission.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “The more important question, though, is what sort of prank would be big enough to distract two highly trained NSB agents whose sole purpose is to watch the one room we need to get into? Not to mention, how will we be able to get out of English class to execute it?”

  We had the same class fifth period, which would make it even harder for us both to get out. Most teachers had a policy that only one student was allowed out of class at a time.

  “Well, Mrs. Hutchison loves me,” Danielle said. “So I can get out easily. No problem there.”

  That was no surprise. All of the teachers loved Danielle. In their eyes she was the perfect student. She was never late, always did her homework, participated in class, and was smart and opinionated enough to challenge them intellectually in a way that few students probably could. Danielle made their jobs both easy and fun all at once. A whole classroom full of Danielles was probably what most teachers dreamed about at night.

  Me, on the other hand, well, I was most definitely every teacher’s worst nightmare. Which meant that I usually couldn’t just ask to leave class politely and be allowed to go. In fact, Mrs. Hutchison regarded me uneasily, as if I were plotting horrible deeds 100 percent of the time. Which, to be honest, used to be mostly true. Back before I became a secret agent and had more important things to worry about.

  “Back to the prank,” I said. “We need to figure that out before even worrying about getting out of class. What’s so insane it could practically clear an entire building?”

  “There’s always the fire alarm?” she suggested.

  A classic. Its reliability and success rate were unparalleled. But somehow I doubted that even a fire alarm would have two NSB agents abandoning their post.

  “What about an actual fire?” I suggested.

  “No way,” Danielle said immediately. “I’m not starting our school on fire. I don’t care what the reason is.”

  I sighed and shook my head. She was right; starting the school on fire could result in someone getting hurt. Besides, it might not even work. It was hard to imagine two NSB agents running from their jobs, screaming in terror at the simple sight of a few flames.

  “Hey, Carson,” Danielle said as a grin spread across her face. “A minute or two is all we need to get in, grab the hard drive, and get out. Right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, I think I need to give my cousin Brad a call.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE CLASSICS

  I SAT IN MY FIFTH-PERIOD CLASS AND SQUIRMED NERVOUSLY IN my seat. I checked my phone discreetly for probably the 342nd time since class had started fifteen minutes ago. If Dillon and Danielle’s cousin Brad didn’t come through for us, the mission was screwed. And, of course, it didn’t help that I couldn’t tell him the real reason we needed this to happen today.

  But apparently the importance didn’t matter. Brad must have really hated Gomez, because the text showed up even as I was sitting there staring at my phone. It just appeared in the notification banner right in front of my eyes:

  eta 10 minutes gomez going to freak way better than last time lololol

  Brad didn’t know Principal Gomez had gotten arrested that morning. I’d once again told him we needed him for an awesome prank on Gomez. Brad had a history with our ex-principal, one that apparently ran deep enough for him to go to such lengths to get even this many years later.

  I texted a quick reply as discreetly as possible, telling him that the east door would be propped open.

  Now, I just had to get out of class somehow so I could get to Principal Gomez’s office window.

  Danielle had already been excused from class, as we’d predicted. She’d asked if she could spend the entire class in the library doing research for her term paper on the history of British literature at the turn of the century. Or something like that. Danielle had a thing for old books, the sort that I found excruciating
to read. If books like Great Expectations really were classics, then I didn’t want any part of anything else people liked from that time. I’d rather stab out my own eyes with fish bones than read another chapter from that book. And I don’t hate reading or anything. I love a good book. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll understand when I’m old and boring, like everybody else.

  But all that was beside the point. The point was, Danielle was already out of class. Now I needed to find a way to get out as well.

  I glanced up at Mrs. Hutchison.

  Several crazy plans flashed through my head. One involved army crawling across the floor and knocking her out with a karate chop. Others were even crazier, like the one that called for me starting an all-out revolution complete with a declaration of independence and rulers fashioned into crossbows. There was even one that required two dozen eggs, a box of staplers, and three small turtles.

  But then it dawned on me that I could simply ask to use the restroom. As much as Mrs. Hutchison didn’t like me, she wasn’t completely barbaric. She’d still give me a bathroom pass if I needed it.

  Sometimes the best solutions are so simple you look right past them.

  Once I was out in the hallway with my ten-minute bathroom pass in hand, I headed toward the east door, the one nearest the administration offices (besides the front door). The east door also offered the advantage of being right next to a large chunk of parking lot that was rarely full, and so there’d be plenty of room for Brad to park his truck.

  I exited the school, propping the door open a few inches using the wooden doorstop. After a quick text message to Danielle telling her to get into position, I headed toward the outside of Principal Gomez’s office window, staying low as I moved around to the other side of the school.

  The window was pretty easy to find since it still hadn’t been repaired after I crashed through it a few weeks before. Instead of fixing it, the school had merely duct-taped a double layer of cardboard over the jagged hole in the window. I sat below it and waited, checking the time on my phone.

  We had just nineteen minutes left to execute the plan before fifth period ended. As I waited for Brad, I had enough time to wonder if this could possibly work. We’d come up with it so quickly. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time we’d run this prank. And it’s not exactly the sort of thing you can plan for, even if you have a week to work out the details. Either way, though, it didn’t matter now; it was too late to back out, as evidenced by a new text message from Brad.

  pulling in now will release in three minutes

  I texted back a thumbs-up emoji and then called Danielle.

  “Is it happening?” she answered in a whisper.

  She was currently hiding in the girls’ bathroom across from the administration offices. Her job was simple: Tell me as soon as the NSB guys stepped out of the office. We knew that if this worked, they’d only allow themselves to be distracted for a few minutes at most, so we couldn’t waste any time.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he’s pulling up now, supposedly.”

  “This is going to work,” she said.

  We waited on the phone in silence. Waited for something to happen. Because when it did, we’d know.

  And then, it did.

  “I can see the goats, Carson,” Danielle said, her voice shaking.

  Danielle and Darren’s cousin Brad owned a farm north of our town of Minnow, and his most popular livestock was goats. But not just any goats. Fainting goats. Which, if you’ve been listening to my story of being a secret agent from the beginning, you might have already known.

  I hate to repeat myself when it comes to pranks. But, like I said about the fire alarm, classics are classics for a reason. And if there is one word to describe two herds of Brad’s prized fainters running loose inside a school in the middle of an otherwise normal day, it’s classic.

  “It’s happening,” Danielle continued. “And . . . it’s beautiful.”

  “Wish I could see it,” I said.

  “You really do!” she said excitedly. “There are so many of them! Oh no, the secretary just noticed and came out into the hallway and screamed. Then a bunch of goats fainted.”

  In between her words, in the background, I could hear the baaing of goats and the shrieking screams of the school’s attendance secretary. Then more chaos erupted on the other end of the line. I heard a few kids shouting now and a lot more screaming.

  “Kids are coming out of nearby classrooms,” Danielle reported, clearly trying to hold back giggles. “It’s insane! The goats are going crazy.”

  “No, not again!” some teacher screamed in the background.

  “Have the agents come out?”

  “Nope,” Danielle said, openly laughing hysterically now.

  “If this plan is going to go up in flames, I at least wish I could see them,” I whined.

  “I have an idea—call you right back,” Danielle said, and the call was disconnected.

  I stared at the phone in shock. Was she crazy? Without her telling me when the coast was clear, how would I know when to enter Gomez’s office? But a few seconds later, an incoming video call from Danielle showed up on my phone.

  She was a genius! Her laughing face appeared on my screen.

  “Check this out,” she said.

  Then the view on my screen spun as she pointed her camera at the action in the hallway. It was chaos, the hallway was packed full of goats. Some were standing around, others were rigid and passed out like giant plastic figurines. There were kids everywhere, having come out from surrounding classrooms. Several teachers were in the middle of the herd, trying to calm everyone and assess the situation. I practically saw steam shooting from their ears as their brains attempted to make sense of the mess.

  Danielle wasn’t even trying to stay concealed anymore. And why should she? Through her video feed, I saw several other kids, and even a few teachers, holding up their phones, filming the insane action. Likely all of them were envisioning their videos becoming the next viral smash success on YouTube.

  But we were getting sidetracked; we needed to stay focused on the mission at hand.

  “Danielle, point it toward the office doors,” I said into my phone.

  She complied, tilting the phone toward the left. The administration office area was now fully in view on my screen. The attendance secretary had retreated back inside and the other three secretaries were on their feet, staring at the Goat Siege with open mouths. Two of them were trying to stifle laughs.

  Then I saw him: one of the NSB agents standing next to Principal Gomez’s door. He was alternating between staring in shock, shaking his head, and laughing. He opened the door behind him and motioned for the inside guard to come over and take a look.

  On my phone, via Danielle’s video feed from the inside, I saw them both step out of Gomez’s office and into the administration office doorway several feet away. They laughed and gaped at the ongoing mess of goats. Brad hadn’t been kidding—he’d really upped the goat factor on this one. But there was no time to sit there and admire the chaos that herds of fainting goats could cause; it was time for me to execute my end of the mission.

  I took stood up, took a deep breath, and then jumped shoulder first into the cardboard- and tape-covered window.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE GHOSTS OF TV GAME SHOWS

  THE CARDBOARD GAVE WAY MUCH EASIER THAN I EXPECTED—certainly easier than the glass windowpane had when I’d crashed through it a few weeks before. The tape and cardboard helped break my fall as I landed next to Gomez’s desk.

  I peeked at the doorway. The two NSB agents stood twenty feet away, just outside the office. They were still facing away from me as they took in all of the goat insanity in the hallway. I knew they’d probably glance back this way at least once or twice, so I needed to stay out of sight and work quickly.

  I moved toward the ancient computer tower under Gomez’s desk, so I could snag the hard drive. During fifth period, I’d watched a quick video on my phone explaining h
ow to remove a hard drive from an old tower desktop. After quietly removing the housing, it was easy to spot the drive and slide it out. I quickly shoved it into my backpack.

  I glanced at my phone, which was still displaying the scene from the other side of the hallway. The two NSB agents continued to watch the goats, completely transfixed. Danielle had been right: the two out-of-town agents had no idea what to make of herds of fainting goats running through a school.

  Still, the goats would only distract them for so long. And so I zipped up my bag, quickly pivoted, and dived back out the window.

  As I walked calmly around the side of the school toward the east entrance, a thought occurred to me: Who was going to help round up all the goats? And wasn’t Brad going to be pissed at us when he found out Gomez wasn’t even at school anymore? And with Gomez gone, who would be laying down any sort of punishment for this one? Could they even tie it back to me?

  Reentering the building through the east door, though, I shook off those questions. In the grand scheme of global terrorism and the threat Medlock posed, all of those things were as insignificant as an old game show rerun. One so old that the corny TV host was now dead and so were all of the contestants, and any of the money that had been won was long gone, and nobody even remembered what lame jokes were told or what prizes were won and lost.

  All of those questions that had flooded my brain were nothing but ghosts.

  CHAPTER 6

  KLEEN(EX) GETAWAYS

  THE SCHOOL SEEMED SOMEWHAT CALM BY THE MIDDLE OF SEVENTH period. I still wasn’t sure how they’d eventually gotten everyone to go back to class, or what they’d done with all of the goats, but by the time the seventh-period bell rang, it was almost as if nothing unusual at all had happened.

  Almost.

  There was still the matter of the goat poop stinking up the main hallway, of course. Someone had cleaned it all out, but the smell wouldn’t be gone for days. But besides that, everyone was back in class, ready to learn. Or, more accurately, back in class buzzing wildly about the goat incident and how it might be related to the wild and insane rumors surrounding Mr. Gomez’s sudden absence. Several of my classmates tried to give me credit for both incidents, but I deflected them emphatically.