The owl shrugged.
Yet again, Coolicious seemed different to Tesla. And not just because his glove was gone and he wasn’t dancing.
His owl costume was baggy, bunching up at the ankles, as if it was too big … or as if the man inside it had shrunk.
“Well, do you have any idea where we are?” Silas asked.
Coolicious shrugged again and then turned and hurried off with a dull rustling of loose felt and polyester.
“Some mascot. He sees kids and runs away,” Nick grumbled. “I guess we’ll have to figure this out for ourselves.” He turned and read the sign on the nearest door. “Storage 32? Wow. This is the first time we’ve made it into the thirties. I think we should try a different direction. Maybe take the next right?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Tesla said.
So they took the next right and found themselves facing yet another long, drab hallway that was identical to the one they’d just left. Almost.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Tesla said. “Look!”
A small square of color about the size of a credit card was lying on the floor nearby. Nick picked it up.
It was a Migraine Monkey Missile Test refrigerator magnet. Nick had left it there hours before, the second (or was it third?) time they’d gotten lost in the museum’s endless halls. On it was a picture of the band. Mojo Jones was in the middle, dressed exactly as he was that day at the Learnasium: jeans, T-shirt, lumberjack shirt. To one side of him was a toweringly tall man wearing a black suit, sunglasses, and a porkpie hat. On his other side was a petite woman with a shaved head, tattered clothes, and tattoos over every visible inch of skin, wearing combat boots that looked six sizes too big for her tiny feet.
“Is that what a ska-punk-emo-metal band’s supposed to look like?” Nick asked.
“You forgot the funk,” said Silas.
“And the retro grunge twist,” said Tesla.
“Whatever,” Nick said. He stuffed the magnet into his pocket. “I think I know where we are now. If I’m remembering right, there should be a pair of Migraine Monkey Missile Test underwear around the next corner.”
There wasn’t. But there was something else lying abandoned on the floor.
“Glovey!” Silas cried.
He ran to the glove, scooped it up, and cradled it in his arms like an infant.
“The gadget glove?” Nick said. “What’s it doing here? And where’s DeMarco?”
Tesla didn’t say anything. She just walked up to Silas and took the glove from his hand, a grim look on her face.
She pushed the Play button on the sound chip, and they heard a voice.
It was DeMarco’s.
“Guys, if you find this … it’s me,” he said.
DeMarco was speaking in a breathy staticky whisper, and a steady thud of quick footsteps could be heard, too. It sounded as if was holding the recording chip close to his mouth while walking fast.
“Things didn’t exactly go according to plan,” he went on.
A new noise rose in the background—a quick sh-sh-sh swishing.
“Whatever’s going on here, it’s way weirder than we thought,” DeMarco said, “and now I think I’m—hey!”
There was a burst of loud, distorted sound.
Then silence.
“Ready?” said Uncle Newt.
“Ready,” said Hiroko.
They each reached out a hand toward the keyboard and together they hit Enter.
Once again, the Hall of Genius came to life.
Lights brightened, machines hummed.
No prominent scientists or inventors went cuckoo or flew apart.
So far, so good.
Next Uncle Newt walked over to the Nikola Tesla display and pushed the big red button there.
“Hello,” robo-Tesla said. “Would you like me to show you how an induction motor works?”
“Yes,” answered Uncle Newt.
“Excellent. It is really quite interesting. The key is creating a rotating magnetic field.”
And on Nikola Tesla went, talking, demonstrating his motor, neither going cuckoo nor flying apart. Uncle Newt let him run through his whole spiel before turning to Hiroko with a smile.
“Looks like we made it,” he said.
Hiroko nodded. She looked relieved. And tired.
“With all of an hour to go before the rededication ceremony,” she said. “I just wish we knew what went wrong before.”
Uncle Newt shrugged.
“A power surge, a short, gremlins … who knows? Whatever it was, obviously it was a fluke. The important thing is that the Hall of Genius is ready, and we can finally relax.”
Just then Nick, Tesla, and Silas burst through the door near the Einstein display.
“DeMarco’s been kidnapped!” Tesla cried.
“What?” Uncle Newt and Hiroko said in unison as the kids ran toward them.
“Well, maybe captured would be more accurate,” said Nick.
“Or caught,” Tesla added.
“Kidnapped, captured, whatever,” Silas snapped. “The point is they got him!”
“Who got him? What is going on?” Uncle Newt asked.
“Nick, you tell him,” Tesla said. “You’re better at synopsizing than me.”
Nick nodded, sucked in a long, deep breath, and then began to explain:
“Tesla thought the Hall of Genius had been sabotaged so we took a look at Ms. Wharton-Wheeler’s computer because she obviously doesn’t like the animatronics in here and we saw that she’d exchanged e-mails with Katherine Mavis with the subject heading ‘Destroying the Museum from Within’ so we figured the two of them were in on it together and then we found out they were having a meeting so we figured out a way to record part of it to get proof and DeMarco was hiding in the room where they were going to be talking and—”
Nick doubled over, gasping for breath.
“He was wearing this when we last saw him,” Tesla continued for her brother, holding up the gadget glove. “We found it lying in the hall. It’s got one of Uncle Newt’s sound chips built into it. This is what it recorded.”
Tesla turned on the chip.
“Guys, if you find this … it’s me,” they heard DeMarco say. “Things didn’t exactly go according to plan. Whatever’s going on here, it’s way weirder than we thought, and now I think I’m—hey!”
“What’s that noise in the background?” Uncle Newt asked. “The shushing?”
“We don’t know,” said Nick.
“It does sound weirdly familiar,” said Tesla.
“Forget the shushing!” Silas blurted out. “What’s that noise at the end? It sounds like someone’s beating DeMarco with a bag of frying pans!”
“I think it’s just distortion, Silas,” Hiroko said gently. “DeMarco probably put his hand over the sound chip when he was taking off the glove. That was clever of him to drop it for you to find.”
“So you believe us?” Nick asked.
“Well, whether there was sabotage or not, something’s definitely happened to DeMarco,” Hiroko said. She turned to Uncle Newt, her expression grave. “We need to do something.”
Uncle Newt nodded.
“There’s only one thing to do,” he said. “We need to take this to the professionals.”
If Tesla had known which professional Uncle Newt would end up taking it to, she would have talked him out of it.
“Let me get this straight,” Berg said. “You want me to listen to a talking glove?”
The squat, strapping guard had been sitting at his boss’s desk in the security office when the group had come in.
“Chief Ruffin’s got important business to attend to elsewhere right now,” he’d told them. “So he left me in charge.”
When they’d told him that DeMarco had disappeared, leaving behind what sounded like a recording of his kidnapping via a gadget-covered glove, Berg had squinted at them like they were crazy.
“Just listen, would you?” Hiroko snapped. “Play DeMarco’s message, Tesla.”
Tesla turned on the sound chip.
Yet even as he listened, Berg’s skeptical squint didn’t disappear.
“What does he mean about things not going according to plan and being weirder than you thought?” Berg asked when DeMarco’s message came to an abrupt end. He was speaking to Uncle Newt and Hiroko, expecting the adults to explain.
“The kids had some suspicions about the malfunction in the Hall of Genius,” Uncle Newt said. “But that’s not what matters right now. We have to find—”
“It does matter!” Tesla interrupted. “If we’re right, then we know who’s got DeMarco!” She turned to Berg and tried to muster all the conviction she could. “We think the museum’s being sabotaged …” But then her confidence—and her voice—cracked. “By Ms. Mavis and Ms. Wharton-Wheeler.”
Berg gave her the look of disgust she was dreading.
“Is this a prank?” he asked.
“No!” said Tesla.
“Are you punking me?”
“No!” said Nick.
“Is this a loyalty test? Something the chief put you up to?”
“No!” said Silas and Hiroko and Uncle Newt.
“Well, then, you’re all nuts,” said Berg.
“Look, that recording isn’t fake,” Nick told him. “You can hear it. Somebody grabbed our friend.”
“And you’re supposed to do something about it!” Silas threw in. “Do your job, dude!”
For a second, it looked as if Berg’s job, as he saw it, might be picking up Silas and hurling him out of the room like a shot put. But then the fury drained from his face, leaving behind only the contempt from before.
Berg picked up a phone from the desk and punched in three numbers.
“When the police get here, you can straighten all this out with them,” he said. “And if they decide to haul you in for filing a false report, that won’t be my fault. Yes, hello. This is security officer Donald F. Berg over at the X-Treme Learnasium. We’ve got a possible child abduction situation here. Who’s reporting it? Some kids. Friends of the alleged victim. No. No witnesses. All right. Thanks.”
Berg hung up.
“They’re going to send a car over when they can.”
“When will that be?” Uncle Newt asked.
Berg glared at him.
“When. They. Can.”
“So what are we gonna do in the meantime?” said Tesla.
“What do you mean, what are we gonna do?” said Berg. “You’re going to wait, that’s what.”
“Just wait?” said Hiroko. “While a boy is missing somewhere in your museum?”
“Exactly,” Berg said. “Do you see that?”
He reached out and tapped one of the video monitors near his boss’s desk. It showed the museum’s main atrium, which was no longer dark and deserted. Overhead lights had been turned on, and men and women in white shirts and black pants were taking positions here and there holding big silver trays.
“Any minute now, some very important people are going to walk in there for a very important event,” he said. “I can’t waste my time looking for a very unimportant kid who’s decided to play hide-and-seek.”
“Unimportant? Unimportant?” Uncle Newt spat, looking madder than his niece and nephew had ever seen him. “Why, you obstinate, obtuse, officious martinet!”
Berg leaned forward and planted his fists on the desk.
“You’re lucky I don’t know what any of those things are,” he growled.
Hiroko stepped between Berg and Uncle Newt and turned to face Nick and Tesla.
“You know, the police are only going to need one of us here with Mr. Berg to make the report,” she said. “Why don’t you give me the sound chip so I can play it when the officers get here? Then the rest of you can go try to … relax.”
She gave the kids a wink.
“Thanks, Hiroko,” said Nick.
“Yeah. Good thinking,” said Tesla.
“What? I can’t relax at a time like this!” said Silas.
“Tell me about it!” said Uncle Newt. “I’m all worked up!”
“But what can you really do until the police arrive?” Hiroko said, winking again—first at Silas, then at Uncle Newt.
“Are you okay?” Silas asked her.
“Something in your eye?” asked Uncle Newt.
Tesla couldn’t take it anymore. She shoved the gadget glove into Hiroko’s hands and then grabbed Uncle Newt and began tugging him toward the door.
“Oh, just come on!”
Nick took hold of Silas and dragged him out, too.
“Hey!” Berg said, starting to stand up. “Wait!”
Hiroko stepped in front of him again, blocking his view of the doorway.
“Tell me, Officer,” she said, gazing at him admiringly. “Do you work out?”
“Oh. Yeah. I do, actually,” Berg said, instantly forgetting about Uncle Newt and the kids. He lifted an arm and flexed a biceps the size of a pot roast. “Does it show?”
“I get it!” Uncle Newt said as he, Tesla, Nick, and Silas walked off up the hall. “Go relax, wink-wink. But we’re not going to relax, are we?”
“We’re going to look for DeMarco!” said Silas, finally getting it, too.
Nick and Tesla shared a long-suffering look.
“Yes. That’s right,” Tesla said. “Berg didn’t believe us, and there’s no guarantee the police will either. So we need to start searching on our own.”
“Where, though?” Nick asked. “There are so many storage rooms in this place, we could look for a year and never find DeMarco. Assuming he’s still in the building at all.”
“Thanks for pointing out why we’re doomed to fail, Little Mr. Sunshine,” Tesla said.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Nick said.
“Maybe we should check Ms. Mavis’s office,” Silas suggested. “Or the exhibit the curator lady’s been working on.”
Tesla thought it over for a moment without slowing her pace.
“No, I don’t think so,” she finally said. “Ms. Mavis couldn’t have gotten DeMarco into her office without someone noticing, and any second now Ms. Wharton-Wheeler’s space exhibit is going to be opened for the gala.”
“Where do we start, then?” Silas asked.
“I have no idea,” said Tesla.
Uncle Newt tapped her on the shoulder.
“Uh, then where are you leading us?”
Tesla finally noticed that she’d moved out in front of the others, striding forward purposefully without knowing where she was going.
She stopped so suddenly that Silas, Nick, and Uncle Newt almost plowed right over her.
“Uncle Newt,” she said, “what do we do?”
Uncle Newt blinked at her, seemingly surprised to find his niece turning to him for advice just because she was eleven and he was forty.
“Well, I’m afraid the first thing we need to do,” he said, “is call DeMarco’s parents and let them know he’s missing.”
Nick and Tesla grimaced.
DeMarco’s mom and dad already distrusted the twins. Now they were going to hate them.
Uncle Newt slipped a hand into one of the pockets of his white lab coat, pulled out his wallet, and without looking at it put it to his ear.
“That’s weird,” he said. “I can’t get a signal.”
“Um, there’s a reason for that,” Nick said, pointing at the wallet.
“Oh. Right.”
Uncle Newt stuffed the wallet back into his pocket and pulled out a phone.
“That’s weird,” he said a moment later. “I’m still not getting a signal.”
He checked to make sure he was trying to call on a phone and not a candy bar or a pocket calculator. But it was a phone, and there was no signal.
“Oh, well. Guess I’ll have to try again later.”
Uncle Newt put his phone away and then slapped his hands together and gave them a rub.
“All righty. Now we need to appraise our data.”
“Do
what now?” Silas said.
“Think about what we know,” Nick explained.
“And what we don’t know,” Uncle Newt said. “The X factors. The unknown quantities.”
“Okay. We know that someone grabbed DeMarco. We don’t know who,” Silas said. “Now, where do we go and what do we do?”
Uncle Newt shook his head. “We think someone grabbed DeMarco. But maybe he was running and dropped the glove. Maybe he got away from whoever was chasing him and got lost. Maybe he was apprehended by one of the security guards, and they didn’t phone it in to Borg.”
“Berg,” Tesla corrected him.
“And you’re forgetting something else we don’t know,” Uncle Newt continued.
“Where they took him?” Silas guessed.
“Yes, there’s that, of course. But I was thinking of the sh-sh-sh.”
“The what-what-what?” said Silas.
Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh. It was a swishing sound, just like the one they’d heard on DeMarco’s recording.
“Yes! That’s it! Very good!” Uncle Newt said, turning back to Tesla.
“I’m not doing it,” she said.
Uncle Newt looked at Nick.
“Me, neither.”
The swishing was growing louder.
Shuffling up the hall behind the group was Coolicious McBrainy. The sh-sh-sh was the sound of the polyester “feathers” on his legs rustling as he walked.
“So the owl grabbed DeMarco?” Silas cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get him.”
“Wait,” said Tesla.
She noticed that Coolicious was wearing his glove again. And now his costume didn’t seem baggy like it had the last time she’d seen him.
So, Tesla decided, there was another X factor to consider: what was up with this big bird? Not only did his outfit keep changing, but this time he was ranting loudly as he marched up the hallway.
“Unacceptable! Unforgivable! Intolerable!”
And then he did something really surprising.
He reached up both wings, ripped off his head, and threw it on the floor.
“Unscrupulous! Unethical! Insulting!” spat his new head—the human one that had been inside the owl head all along.
Coolicious McBrainy, it turned out, was a fifty-ish man with short-cropped red hair and a mustache as thick and bristly as a scrub brush. His eyes were wild, his face beaded with perspiration.
Nick and Tesla's Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove Page 10
