“Mojo, what’s that noise?” Mavis said before the boys could answer. “Is it the security alarm?”
Mojo shook his head.
“The security alarm’s more of a CHEEEEE-oooooooooh, CHEEEEE-oooooooooh.”
“Told you,” Matt said to Amy.
“You said CHEEEEE-errrrrrr,” she shot back.
“Close enough!”
“Well, whatever it is,” Nick said, “it’s definitely some kind of alarm. Which means maybe we shouldn’t just be standing here talking, right?”
Silas nodded and um-hmmed.
“They’re right,” Mojo said. “We should clear everyone out till we know what’s going on.”
The director groaned.
“I’ll call you back,” she said into the phone. “And when I do, you’d better have some shrimp puffs! JDI!”
She down slammed the phone, typed something into her computer with hard angry jabs onto the keyboard, and then stood and stalked out of her office.
“JDI?” Nick asked.
“Just do it,” Matt answered. “It’s her mantra.”
“Mantra?” Nick asked.
“Okay, people—listen up!” Mavis said. “The universe has decided that we’re not stressed out enough today. So I’m going to have to ask all of you to put a pin in your current task and step outside while I lean in to this disturbance and see what this noise is about. Is that PAC?”
“That means perfectly absolutely clear,” Matt said to Nick before he could ask. Mumbling and grumbling, the museum’s staff filed out of their workspaces and began trudging off. Nick and Silas went with them, although they dropped back to the end of the line.
The hallway ended at a “T” intersection. The museum workers headed left, toward an exit sign and a metal door at the end of the corridor. Katherine Mavis turned right—toward the sound of the alarm.
Mojo followed. “I’ll tag along, just in case,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like a computer or network problem, but you never know.”
“Thanks, Mojo. At least somebody around here isn’t totally acluistic.” She peered down the hallway, missing the total confusion that her remark brought to Mojo’s face.
Nick and Silas paused to watch them go.
“Be careful!” Nick called out.
Mojo glanced back over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry guys,” he said with a smile. “We’ll be fine.”
But Nick hadn’t been yelling to him.
DeMarco was peeping around a corner, waiting to see who might come hurrying up the hall to investigate the NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE that had been deafening him for what seemed like an hour (but was really more like a few minutes). Even though he held the gadget glove as far from his body as he could, the thing was loud. Why oh why, he wondered, did he have to be the quickest, the quietest, the bravest, the coolest of his friends? Sometimes it was a real pain.
DeMarco had to admit, though—part of him was kind of enjoying the suspense. He’d always thought of being a stuntman or a race car driver or something like that when he grew up. But this skulking-around, about-to-be-chased thing had possibilities. Maybe he could rent himself out to jaded billionaire playboys who wanted to experience the thrill of hunting human quarry. Hunting with paintball guns, of course. DeMarco craved excitement, but he wasn’t crazy.
Yeah, he imagined…DeMarco Davison, Prey for Pay. That had a nice ring to it. The only challenge would be finding the jaded billionaire playboys. He knew they had to be out there somewhere, but he’d never run across any personally. Maybe he’d ask Nick and Tesla. They attracted strange and dangerous people like honey attracted—
DeMarco shook off his Prey for Pay daydream. He’d become used to the sound of the gadget glove alarm, but a shout had cut through the shrill whine. The voice was familiar—it was Nick’s—but the words were garbled.
Had he yelled “Big awful!”?
“Beak airful!”?
Wait…“Be careful!” Yes, that was it.
DeMarco saw a pair of shadows stretched from around the corner he’d been watching. In about half a second, at least two people would be following them.
It had definitely been “Be careful!”
DeMarco and his friends had been getting lost in the museum’s labyrinthine hallways all day. But now they could make the maze work for them, so long as he was fast enough and no one walked up behind him. DeMarco spun on his heel and dashed for the next corner. He rounded it, stopped, and peeked out again, looking for the shadows. He realized how lucky he was that not all the lights in this part of the museum had been turned on, which meant that people cast shadows. And as soon as he saw them, he took off again.
Two more sprints around two more corners. That was all Tesla had asked him to do. Then he’d duck into one of the museum’s many storage rooms and turn off the alarm. Hopefully, that would give Tesla enough time to get the goods on Mavis and Wharton-Wheeler. If not, well, it meant that DeMarco had worked up a lot of adrenaline for nothing.
Good thing I love adrenaline, DeMarco told himself.
The shadows appeared again.
DeMarco turned and ran.
Tesla heard the blare of the alarm horn fade into the distance.
DeMarco was on the move. Which meant it was time for her to move, too. Fast.
She stepped out of the bathroom she’d been hiding in and darted into Katherine Mavis’s office. Hopefully, it would take only a moment to call up the e-mail and find her message to the curator. If everything went smoothly, she might even have time to print it out.
Tesla sat in the director’s chair and spun around to face the computer on the desk.
A rectangular box hovered in the middle of the screen. In it were four words.
MUSEUM-NET LOG-IN
ID:
PASSWORD:
The director had logged off her computer before leaving her office.
Tesla was foiled! Thwarted! And furious, too, because she hated when that happened.
“No way! No way, no way, no way!” she ranted. “An alarm goes off and you take the time to log off your computer? What are you, lady? Paranoid?”
Of course, Tesla realized, it wasn’t paranoia if Ms. Mavis really did have incriminating e-mails on her computer. It was smart.
Tesla kicked herself—literally, banging her right foot into her left shin—for not seeing this turn of events coming. Still, maybe all was not lost. Maybe she could find something that would make all the preparation and risk worth it.
She began scanning the desk for clues, with no idea what those might be. A copy of Sabotage for Dummies? A voodoo doll in the shape of the museum with pins stuck in it? A to-do list with “Destroy Hall of Genius” written between “Buy eggs” and “Pick up dry cleaning”?
Then an old-fashioned date-book planner caught her eye. It was lying next to the desk phone, open to the calendar for the week. Tesla pulled it over to her and reviewed the schedule written on it.
The woman was certainly busy, she had to admit. Practically every day of the week was jammed with conference calls, interviews, meetings during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And the rededication ceremony that night. Of course.
But then Tesla spied a note scribbled in the slot for 4:30 p.m.: “W-W, meeting room 2.”
Bingo!
“W-W” obviously wasn’t Wonder Woman. Or Willy Wonka. Or Where’s Waldo. There could be only one person at the museum with those initials.
So, Tesla thought, Ms. Mavis and Ms. Wharton- Wheeler are getting together to plot face-to-face, eh? Smart again. There’d be no electronic trail to follow, no e-mails or texts or voice messages that someone could find. No evidence. Unless…
Tesla checked the old-fashioned analog clock that was hanging on the wall above the desk. There was no time to lose: the meeting was little more than an hour away. Tesla would have to hurry if she wanted to be ready for it.
She stood up and started for the door just as Berg, the burly security guard, stepped through it.
“Ms.
Mavis,” Berg said, “Have you heard an alar—huh?”
Once his surprise wore off, Tesla could tell he was tempted to call her a “punk.”
But he managed to restrain himself.
“Hold it right there, miss,” he said instead.
Five minutes later, Tesla found herself sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the museum’s security office. The room contained some filing cabinets, a bulletin board, a bank of flickering video monitors, a desk, and, sitting behind the desk, one very glum-looking man. He wore the same police-style uniform as Berg, but he looked older and flabbier. The nametag on his shirt said RUFFIN.
“Okay, Berg,” Ruffin said with a sigh. “What is it this time?”
“I caught her creeping around Katherine Mavis’s office,” said Berg, who was standing next to Tesla. He put a hand on her shoulder.
Tesla shrugged it off. “I wasn’t creeping around,” she said. “I was walking.”
Ruffin glanced at the pass hanging around Tesla’s neck. “You’re one of the kids here with what’s-his-face and what’s-her-name? The animatronics geniuses?” He rolled his eyes as the last word left his lips.
“Yes,” Tesla said. “What’s-his-face is my uncle.”
“So why did you go into our director’s office?”
Tesla folded her arms across her chest.
“To sit in her chair,” she said firmly.
“Sit in her chair?” said Ruffin.
Tesla nodded. “I look up to Ms. Mavis,” she said. “A young woman like her in charge of a big, wonderful place like this? It’s inspiring. I just wanted to feel what it was like to sit at her desk. You know, bask in her glory a minute. And I was just leaving when he walked in,” Tesla said, jerking her thumb at the muscle-bound guard standing beside her. “Wasn’t I?”
She turned to stare at Berg.
“Yes,” he said with obvious reluctance.
“And I hadn’t taken anything, had I?”
“No,” Berg grated out.
“He made me turn out my pockets,” Tesla explained to Ruffin. “The only thing in ’em was gum and lint.”
“And money!” Berg added.
“My own money. Two pennies and a quarter,” Tesla said to Ruffin. “If I was in there to steal stuff, I could have done a lot better than that.”
“Young lady,” Ruffin sighed after a moment, “I don’t believe you meant to do anything wrong.”
“Aww!” Berg whined.
“But you must have known you weren’t supposed to go in any of the offices unattended,” Ruffin continued. “That day pass you’re wearing says we trust you, and you betrayed that trust, whether you meant to or not.”
Tesla nodded and tried to look sheepish and contrite. It wasn’t an expression she wore very often, so she wasn’t sure if she was doing it right. Ruffin kept talking. Tesla tried to pay attention, but she’d noticed something on one of the video screens behind him: a room that Tesla didn’t recognize. She could see displays along the walls and Learnasium guards standing in each corner. In the middle of the room, a group of men and women were huddled over what looked like two pieces of machinery. Two of the men were wearing coveralls, and when Telsa squinted, she could read a logo printed on the back:
Abruptly, the logo—and everything around it—disappeared. Ruffin had turned around and switched off the monitor.
“Here I am about to let you off the hook,” Ruffin said, “and you don’t even have the courtesy to pay attention?”
“I’m sorry,” Tesla said. “I just got distracted. I know what I did was wrong and rude and stupid, and I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Ruffin said. “I have enough to worry about today without—yes?”
Katherine Mavis had appeared in the doorway, with Mojo Jones behind her. “Hi, Carl,” Mavis said to Ruffin. “Quick Q&A: Did a security alarm go off a few minutes ago?”
“Oh, yeah! I forgot to tell you, Chief,” Berg said. “An alarm went off a few minutes ago.”
“Gee, thanks for the report, Berg,” Ruffin said dryly. “What kind of alarm?”
Berg rubbed his chin.
“I don’t know. It made sort of a NEHHHHHHHH sound.”
“It was more of a NEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” said Mojo.
“That’s not the security alarm. It goes cheeeeeEEEEEE-oooooooOOOOH,” Ruffin said. “And the fire alarm is MEEEEE-uhhhhhh. And anyway, I would’ve seen an alert on the network if any of our alarms went off.”
“Maybe something in the system malfunctioned when we lost power earlier,” Ms. Mavis suggested.
Ruffin shook his head.
“That wouldn’t change a cheeeeeeEEEEEE-oooooooOOOOOH to a NEEEEEEEEEEEEE.”
“Well, we heard something, Carl,” Mavis said. “And I don’t want any cheeeeeEEEEE-oooooOOOOOH or NEEEEEEEE when we’re about to monetize a cohort of V.I.P. predonors in a couple hours. Why don’t you lateralize some boots on the ground for a little due diligence?”
Tesla stifled a “Huh?”
Ruffin seemed to understand, though.
“Of course, Katherine,” he said with a sigh. “Berg, go check it out.”
Berg straightened to his full height—which wasn’t quite to the director’s shoulders—and looked like he wanted to salute.
“I’m on it, Chief! Ms. Mavis, why don’t you show me where you think the NEEEEEEEEE was coming from.”
“It seemed to come and go. That was one of the weird things about it,” Mavis said as she led Berg out of the office. “But the last time we heard it, we were up this way. Near the east exit.”
Mojo stepped aside to let Mavis and Berg pass. Once they were beyond him, he leaned back into the security office.
“Everything all right?” he asked Tesla.
“Oh. Sure. Mr. Ruffin and I were just talking about … stuff.”
“Hopefully you were telling him about your favorite new band.”
Mojo pointed at the Migraine Monkey Missile Test logo on his T-shirt.
Tesla smiled apologetically.
“No. Sorry. I haven’t had a chance to listen to your CD yet. I’m sure I’ll be raving about it to everyone once I do.”
“Well, you won’t have to tell me about it,” Ruffin said. “There’s no one in the museum that Mojo hasn’t given that CD to. It’s actually not that bad, though I like the funk a lot more than the punk and all the rest of it.”
“Ska-punk-emo-metal. With a retro grunge twist,” Mojo said.
“And you rap,” Ruffin said in a weary but indulgent way. “But much more important, you code. Which is what you’re supposed to be doing right now so that we can tell our friends from hmm-hmm-hmm there won’t be any more blackouts.”
“This guy,” Mojo said to Tesla, shaking his head and jerking his thumb at Ruffin. “You come to work and he actually expects you to work. It’s nuts.” He gave Tesla a grin and a wave. “Later.”
And with that he left.
Ruffin obviously expected Tesla to do the same. He stared at her silently, eyebrows high on his forehead, with his hand held out toward the door.
“Our friends from hmm-hmm-hmm?” Tesla said to him.
His expression didn’t change; his hand didn’t move.
“I expect me to work, too,” he said. “If people would only let me.”
“Okay. I understand.”
Tesla thanked him and walked out the door.
She did understand.
She had work to do, too.
No sooner had Tesla started down the hallway than she saw a giant owl rounding the corner at the other end. “Thanks,” the big bird was saying to someone he’d left around the corner. “Have a think-tastic day!”
The man in the owl suit stopped when he noticed Tesla coming his way. Tesla saw that he had a museum day pass hung around his neck. And there was a blue winter glove pinned to the end of one of his wings.
He did a spin and a split, then popped back up to his feet-slash-talons.
“How do you like my glove?” he asked Te
sla.
“Um,” she stammered. “It’s … it’s nice.”
“I hear all the cool kids are wearing ’em these days.”
“Oh. Yeah. Definitely.”
“Excellent.” The owl stuck his glove out to Tesla. “Coolicious McBrainy’s the name, youth outreach is the game.”
“Hi. I’m Tesla.” She gripped the glove lightly to shake the owl’s hand. Or wing? Feathers?
“You’re not in trouble, are you?” Coolicious said, tilting his huge round head toward the security office.
“I just had some explaining to do,” Tesla answered.
“Well, good, Tesla,” Coolicious answered. “I’m sure everything will work out fine.” He then proceeded to moonwalk away from her, waving goodbye with his gloved wing the whole time. Tesla waved back in a daze.
“Stay in school, Tesla,” the owl called to her. “And have a think-tastic day!”
So Silas hadn’t dreamed the giant dancing owl after all.
Usually Tesla was surprised when Silas turned out to be right about something. But this was the biggest shocker yet.
Tesla was getting better at navigating the museum’s corridors. She’d gotten lost only once since leaving the security office, and she realized her mistake as soon as she saw the door marked STAFF LOCKER ROOM. She’d already passed the door four times that day, enough to know she’d taken a right when she should have gone left two corners back.
Just as she turned around, the door opened and Coolicious McBrainy stepped out.
Surprised to see the giant owl again so soon, Tesla stopped in her tracks. She expected him to break into some dance move. But Coolicious simply acknowledged her with a wave and then walked swiftly past.
Tesla shrugged and went on her way. But she couldn’t shake the feeling there was something different about the owl, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. When she realized what it was, she turned and called, “Hey! You’re not wearing your pass! Better put it on quick or else Berg’s gonna slap you in handcuffs!”
Coolicious looked back just long enough to give her another wave. Which was when Tesla noticed something else: there was no glove on the end of his wing. He must have figured out that wearing a glove wasn’t so cool after all.
Nick and Tesla's Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove Page 8
