Bringing Down the Mouse

by Ben Mezrich

  Charlie shook his head. That didn’t make sense. Miranda had told them she was a teaching student. Heck, she was a teaching assistant at Nagassack, getting credit for assisting the teachers there with grades seven and eight. Why would she need teaching credits if she was an engineering student?

  His face paled as another thought hit him. She’d told the group that she had formed the Carnival Killers because she was working on a paper about group dynamics in middle schoolers. Would a mechanical engineering major at MIT be working on a paper on middle schoolers?

  And what about her original claim that whatever little money came along with the prize for beating the wheel would go to her teaching department as charity. If she wasn’t a student at Northeastern, had she simply been lying to them?

  Charlie didn’t know what to think. He stared at the ID card, frozen in place, listening to the Vivaldi in the background, feeling each vibrating violin string as if it was slapping against his face—

  And then suddenly, the violins stopped. The room went dead silent.

  Charlie hastily shoved the card back in the card holder, flipped the purse and let it fall back to the carpet, then leaped to his feet.

  Miranda had entered the room but had her back to him as she fidgeted with the TV, choosing a new music channel. Charlie had no idea if she had noticed him in the room or not, but from the way she was swaying, he was pretty sure she had added to the three empty minibottles she’d consumed before heading out. He decided not to stick around to find out.

  He leaped forward, his feet barely touching the carpet, and dove through the still-open door. He hit the hallway at full speed, nearly careening into the opposite wall, then found his balance and raced toward the elevators. He didn’t look back until he was inside, hitting the down button with his thumb as hard as he could. Just as the doors shut, he caught a glimpse of motion from the direction of Miranda’s room, a spray of jet-black hair, a flash of alabaster skin in the dim light from the hallway ceiling, and then the elevator doors clanked shut.

  He was breathing hard as the elevator descended. If she’d seen him, well, he wasn’t sure how he’d explain himself. But even more pressing, something was going on, and it wasn’t good.

  Miranda had lied. Charlie wasn’t sure why, but he intended to find out. It was now nearly midnight, which meant he only had a few more hours, and he wasn’t going to be able to go any further without help. Which left him with only one option.

  He was going to break the Cardinal Rule of the Carnival Killers.

  21

  THERE WERE FEW THINGS more peaceful-looking than a gawky, redheaded kid in Spider-Man pajamas, splayed out faceup on a still-made double bed, cheeks splotched with chocolate from a half-eaten Toblerone bar, snoring away in the dim glow of a flat-screen TV. The pajamas were an inside joke; Charlie had convinced his parents to buy them for Jeremy for his eleventh birthday, insisting that the pj’s were all that Jeremy had asked for, and Jeremy had been forced to smile and thank Charlie’s mom and dad, all the while cursing Charlie under his breath. Two years later, the pajamas were now more than two sizes too small; they barely came down to his calves, and were frayed into nothingness right around his elbows. Spider-Man himself had faded almost into oblivion; he was now more dull, reddish blob than well-defined superhero. But the funny thing was, over the years Jeremy had actually grown to love them, and wore them as often as he could, especially whenever Charlie was sleeping over.

  Seeing him lying there, snoring away, a smile from the day’s excitement still on his chocolate-covered lips, Charlie almost felt bad about what he was about to do. But then he flashed back to Miranda’s room and the college ID, and he knew he had no choice. He needed his friend, and he needed him alert and awake.

  Charlie held the glass of ice four inches above Jeremy’s face, and then flipped it over. There was a moment’s pause, and then Jeremy’s eyes snapped open like window shades, and he jerked upward, sending the Toblerone bar and television remote skittering across the room.

  “What the heck! Hey, man, I was sleeping!”

  “I can see that,” Charlie said as he lowered himself onto the side of the bed. Jeremy was sputtering, slapping pieces of ice off of his face, neck, and chest. One piece managed to find its way under the material of his pajamas, and he wriggled back and forth to try to work it free. “You look like a big ginger snake trying to shed its skin. Sorry I had to use extreme measures, but I need your help, and it can’t wait until morning.”

  Jeremy obviously heard the change in Charlie’s tone; he could tell that his friend wasn’t joking, and despite all the distance that had grown between them in the past few weeks, Jeremy didn’t brush him away. Charlie felt even worse about all the lies and subterfuge; but that was over with now.

  “I’m here for you, you know that. And I’m dressed to impress.”

  That got a little smile out of Charlie, but his tone remained serious.

  “I’m going to tell you something, Jeremy, and it’s going to sound crazy, but all of it is true. All I ask is that you wait until I’m finished talking before you respond.”

  Charlie took a deep breath, and then began at the beginning.

  • • •

  Ten minutes later, Jeremy was leaning back against a pillow, his hair like a demented red halo across the pillowcase. Every last vestige of sleep was gone from his eyes, and the chocolate on his cheeks had blended in with the burst of blush on his face.

  “Holy cow, Batman. That’s a crazy story.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “So you see why I’ve been acting so strange, and why I couldn’t tell you anything. I wanted to. But yeah, it’s all pretty crazy.”

  “And cool. It’s also very cool. Finn, Magic, and that girl, Sam? Wow, man, it’s like the Whiz Kids on steroids. Beating carnival games with math. I freaking love it.”

  Jeremy was literally bouncing on the bed, and Charlie was worried for a moment that his friend had missed the most important part—that Miranda had probably lied about who she was, and thus, why she had brought the team together. But then Jeremy got serious again, leaning forward off of the pillow.

  “Obviously, we need more information. This Miranda chick, she’s not at all what she seems. She’s a facade. We have to knock down that facade and find out what makes her tick.”

  Charlie nodded. It was exactly what he wanted to hear. Jeremy had sifted right through to the crux of the situation; he was Charlie’s best friend, and in many ways, he was like an extension of Charlie’s personality. Charlie felt whole, talking it through with him, and again, he regretted not bringing Jeremy into the scheme earlier. But it didn’t seem to matter to Jeremy; he was ready to help. The question was, what could either of them do?

  “And how do we go about that? It’s after midnight. I’m supposed to spin the wheel in, like, eight hours.”

  Jeremy looked him right in the eyes.

  “There’s only one option, dude.”

  Charlie stopped. He realized what his friend was saying, and shook his head.

  “Like I said, it’s after midnight—”

  “One option,” Jeremy repeated, lowering his voice.

  Charlie’s head stopped shaking, because he knew that his friend was right. He had been trying to avoid coming to the same conclusion, but Jeremy had zeroed right in. It was the one and only thing they could do.

  Without a word, Charlie reached into his pocket and retrieved his dad’s iPhone. He wasn’t thrilled about what was coming, but it really was the only way.

  “Code Blue,” Jeremy said, putting words to both of their thoughts.

  “Code Blue,” Charlie repeated. “And, boy, is she going to let us have it.”

  And then he started to dial.

  22

  “OKAY, HERE’S HOW THIS is gonna work. Electromagnetic crampons attached to woven steel gloves. We work our way up the side of Building 10, draped in highly reflective glass-mail cloaks to confuse angles of vision from the street below. Then we reverse rappel u
p the Great Dome with retractable aluminum claws, and use a chemical solvent on the iron joints that attach the skylights to the top of the dome. Once through the joints, we string high-tensile wire down through the opening and shimmy down into the lobby. Ten feet above the floor, we set off a ring of cordite satchels we’ve previously placed, in a parallel series along Mass Avenue, to draw the attention of the security guards. Then we drop down, using spring-loaded pressure pads attached to the bottom of our boots to absorb the kinetic energy. When we’re on the ground, we blanket our approach with military-grade sulfur smoke bombs, and we make our way to the file room. In and out, twelve minutes, minus how long it takes to get the materials and set up the cordite. Yippee-ki–yay!”

  Kentaro crossed his arms against his chest, breathing heavily from the monologue, his miniature chest ballooning forward with pride. Marion, next to him in the dark recess of the alley that jutted off of Mass Avenue, shadowed by the multistoried building that seemed to stretch on forever in front of them, nodded vigorously, his thick cheeks jiggling beneath the black knit cap he’d pulled down over his curly hair. The hat matched his clothes; some sort of bizarre black jumpsuit, halfway between sweats and a ski outfit. Kentaro’s outfit wasn’t much better: black long johns on top and bottom, and bright green rubber kitchen gloves.

  Crystal stared at the two of them for a full beat. Then she pulled a plastic card out of the back pocket of her overalls and waved it in front of them.

  “Or, we could try this.”

  She shoved the card into a slot by the nondescript green door in front of them, and there was a high metallic click as the electronic lock opened.

  Kentaro and Marion glanced at each other, then back at Crystal.

  “I guess that might work too,” Kentaro mumbled.

  “If you want to take the boring approach,” Marion added.

  Crystal groaned to herself as she twisted the doorknob, pulling the green door open. Three descending stone steps led to a second door with a matching security slot.

  “If you’d rather blow the interior door with cordite, be my guest,” she said, waving Kentaro ahead. He shrugged sheepishly.

  Idiots, Crystal thought to herself. The two worst covert operatives in history, and she was stuck with them. Even worse, the three of them were embarking on the most dangerous Code Blue in the history of the Whiz Kids—with almost no warning, no preparation, and only the barest understanding of what the heck they were getting themselves into.

  But in truth, there hadn’t been any choice. Charlie had called the Code Blue in from Florida, and no matter how infuriating he’d been over the past month, it was their duty to respond. And, to be fair, in the six years since the Whiz Kids had come up with the term, it had only been enacted once before. And that had been nearly four years ago, when Marion had accidentally let his sister’s cat out of his house when his family was away at the mall. An officially called Code Blue was supposed to be a matter of life and death, but then again, Marion’s older sister was quite a beast, nearly twice Marion’s size, with dyed-blue hair and an ever-present lacrosse stick gripped in her meaty right hand. Rumor was, she had once nearly decapitated an eighth grader who had made fun of her hair—and that was when she was nine! So that first and until now only use of Code Blue had been confirmed, and Crystal, Charlie, Jeremy, and Kentaro had spent an entire afternoon helping Marion dig through bushes, climb trees, and sneak into unlocked garages searching for a mangy Siamese who answered to Tiffy, if she deigned to answer at all. They did, eventually, find Tiffy, hanging upside down by her claws from a telephone pole three blocks from Marion’s house. But by the time they’d returned with the escaped feline, Marion’s sister had already stationed herself on his front porch, lacrosse stick in hand. Only a sudden outbreak of cracked, bleeding hives had saved him from a beating.

  Tonight was different. First of all, it was nearly one in the morning, which meant all of them had been fast asleep when the call had come in, and they’d had to figure out ways to sneak out of their homes, way past bedtime. They’d previously come up with the process to call a Code Blue after hours: Charlie had dialed each of their homes—landlines, of course—and let the phone ring three times, then hung up and called again, hanging up before anyone answered. But it was up to each Whiz Kid individually to figure out a way out of the house. Crystal had snuck through a first-floor bathroom window. For all she knew, Kentaro may have crawled through a doggy door. Marion had gone out through his garage—beads of sweat lubricating his chubby form as he squeezed between his parents’ matching BMW X5s.

  After a quick stop at Charlie’s house to retrieve Charlie’s father’s MIT key card and ID, which Charlie had told her she could find in the glove compartment of his Volvo, spare keys for which his father kept in a magnetic case in the rear wheel well, they met on a nearby corner, made a call from Crystal’s cell, and all cabbed it to the address just off of Mass Avenue. They were pretty young to be taking taxis by themselves, but that was really just a matter of convincing a tired, overworked driver in the middle of a night shift that a parent would be waiting for them when they reached their destination.

  And the danger was multiplied by the sheer fact that all three of them would probably be applying to the school one day, because for kids like them, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was like a mother ship. The university was dedicated to geeks, geekdom, a full on bastion of nerds like them learning to inherit the earth. Looking up at the shadows of the enormous Great Dome that served as the university’s architectural center, just a dozen yards around the corner from where they were standing—a mountain of stone, glass, and noble gothic pillars rising high into the air—well, it was beyond awe-inspiring. Even if that pinprick Kentaro was still imagining blowing much of it up with cordite satchels.

  Crystal steeled herself and hurried down the small flight of stairs. She used the card again, listened for another mechanical click, then opened the second door and ushered her two overeager accomplices inside.

  The hallway beyond the door was halfway between tunnel and corridor; it had an institutional feel, with a shiny linoleum floor, off-yellow walls, and a low ceiling. The hallway stretched in either direction as far as the eye could see, lined on both sides with numbered doors.

  As infinite as this hallway seemed when she peered ahead, it wasn’t the actual Infinite Corridor of MIT fame; that was a couple of levels up, above their heads, an eight-hundred-and-twenty-five-foot cavernous corridor that cut through the spine of the university. Even now, even in the middle of the night, when the air outside was still bearable and the snow had yet to fall, Crystal knew that the Infinite Corridor would be crowded with students moving one way or another, heading to the nightly extra help sessions and club meetings, bouncing off one another and the walls like electrons in a hadron collider. In many ways, the Infinite Corridor was the center and source of MIT student life, a circulatory system pumping brilliant people between the different organlike departments. Day or night, the Infinite Corridor was the true artery of MIT.

  If the Infinite Corridor was the circulatory system, then this hallway was quite possibly the bowels. It was mostly devoid of students, a veritable shaft beneath the mine, which kept the circulatory system pumping.

  Janitorial rooms, storage facilities, maintenance alcoves, this was where the guts lived. Crystal glanced at the closest door, reading the number above the knob. Then she turned to Marion.

  “Show me the blueprint again,” she said. There had never been any question about who would be leading the Code Blue; if the two buffoons had been in charge, they’d all have probably ended up in the Charles River by now, after trying to scale the Great Dome.

  Marion opened the zipper of his jumpsuit and removed a small rolled-up piece of blue paper. He handed it to Crystal with a flourish, even bowing slightly. Crystal fought the urge to punch him in his knit cap. It helped to look at the blueprint; as she unrolled the blue paper, she had to admit that Marion had his uses. He’d known exactly where to loo
k to find the architectural blueprint, and ten minutes with his parents’ computer had been all he’d needed.

  Crystal drew a finger along the etched lines on the blueprint; it wasn’t so different, really, than reading the schematics of an iron- or copper-ore mine, something she did quite often, actually, as a break from cataloguing and lovingly recataloguing her mineral collection. It took only a few minutes to find what she was looking for. Then she started forward, moving at such a brisk pace that Kentaro, with his little legs, had to jog to keep up.

  “If someone sees us,” the overly imaginative pipsqueak peeped, “we’re on government business. The military gives a lot of money to MIT, there’s a lot of top secret defense research going on around here.”