Emma leaned back in her chair, tilting her head back. “Ugh,” she groaned, and the sound was so similar to Mika’s pitiful sheep bleating that Andy almost laughed. Straightening up, Emma took a deep breath. “I definitely do not think you guys did that,” she said earnestly. “But someone did get into our account and see the hints. They left a message; it was so . . . uh, hang on.”
Before Andy or Mika could respond, Emma picked up her phone and started tapping. A moment later, Andy heard ringing.
“Are you calling someone?”
“I’m FaceTiming Tyler,” Emma said, leaning forward and stretching her arms across the table so that Andy and Mika could see the screen. “It’s only midnight in New York, so I know he’s still awake.”
Sure enough, a second later the ringing stopped and a boy’s face filled the screen. He had pale skin and wore wire-rimmed glasses and a Yankees baseball cap. “Emma?”
Emma gestured for Andy and Mika to lean in so that Tyler could see them. “Hey,” she said shortly. “This is Andy and Mika Kudo. Have you been bothering her on Instagram?”
Tyler’s eyes flared open briefly. Then he pulled a face. “Don’t be so dramatic. I was just—”
“It’s wrong, Tyler!” Emma yelled, and across the restaurant, a few heads turned in their direction. “Seriously, I told you they didn’t hack our account. And even if they did, you can’t just send a girl random messages like that! I can’t believe you—”
“Okay, okay!” Tyler said, clearly exasperated. “I’m sorry, all right? I guess I was just angry that you weren’t concentrating on playing the game and finding clues. It seemed like you were more interested in checking Instagram and hanging out with her than winning. But I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Tell her that.” Emma tilted the phone toward Mika, who looked as startled as a deer in headlights. “Well, go on!”
Andy watched as Tyler and Mika stared at one another. Finally, Mika cleared her throat.
“We didn’t hack into your account,” she said. “Honestly.”
Slowly, Tyler’s expression changed from exasperated to guilty.
“Okay. I’m sorry I sent those messages.” He sounded like he meant it, and after a second, Mika nodded.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Andy leaned forward. “But someone definitely hacked into your account?”
“Yup. Well, they hacked into Emma’s account,” Tyler corrected himself. “They left a message in our chat room saying they saw her leave the note at the Meiji Shrine, so they looked at the hints when we won the Bronze. You two were at the shrine, that’s why I thought it was you.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t know Emma had left the note,” Mika said. “We only just figured that out this morning!”
“And if we’d seen Emma leave the note, we wouldn’t have looked for the medal at the zoo!” Andy pointed out. “We would’ve known it was fake.”
Tyler frowned. “So you were going to cheat.”
Andy opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out. Once again, he tried to imagine what would have happened if the Silver medal had been in the panda exhibit. Would he really have just walked away and left it there?
“We are not cheaters,” Mika told Tyler fiercely. “But someone out there is. So maybe stop leaving notes to throw people off and just play the game fairly.”
“We are playing fair,” Tyler retorted. “Those—”
“Maybe the notes were a bad idea,” Emma interrupted, and Tyler groaned.
“It wasn’t cheating, Emma, it was a strategy!”
“I know, but—”
“It’s a pretty sneaky strategy,” Andy said flatly. “But you’re right—we fell for it, and if the Silver medal had been there, I might have taken it. But that’s not the same as hacking into someone’s account.”
He stood up, and so did Mika. Emma looked worriedly back and forth between them. “Are you leaving?”
“We’re going to look for clues,” Andy said, glancing at Tyler, who was watching him closely. “And we’re going to find the Gold medal. Fairly.”
With that, Andy walked out of the restaurant. Outside, he pulled out his phone and opened OlympiFan. Mika joined him, a frown tugging the corners of her mouth.
“What about Emma?”
Andy stared at her. “You don’t seriously want to hang out with her after that, do you?”
“I don’t know.” Mika shifted from one foot to the other. “She apologized. And she didn’t know about A_Fan.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Andy stopped, then sighed. “I guess if you want to invite her to come, it’s fine.”
Mika swallowed, glancing back at the restaurant. “Let’s just go,” she said at last. Relieved, Andy opened AR mode on his phone and started walking, keeping his eyes on the blue footprints. Someone out there was trying to cheat their way to victory. But whoever it was, they already had two hints to the Masked Medalist’s identity, and they hadn’t made a guess.
As long as the Gold medal was out there, Team MADR still had a chance to win the game. And if Andy couldn’t win fairly, then he didn’t want to win at all.
EB: Hey Mika, sorry again about Tyler. I totally get why you and Andy are upset about the notes. I just wanted to show you the message the hacker left in our team chat room . . . “I saw you leave those fake clues. Thanks for the hints, cheaters. “ I have no idea how this person even got into my account. So be careful, and good luck finding the Gold!
MK: Thanks! That’s really nice of you. Hope we see you around soon!
EB:
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MIKA
“HI, LILY! HI, PO!”
On Mika’s phone screen, Riley giggled as she tried to lift Lily’s paw in a wave. Po squirmed in Riley’s lap, his big brown eyes focused on something off-screen. With an excited bark, he wiggled out of Riley’s grasp and bounded off. Riley threw up her arms in defeat as Lily scampered after him.
“I tried,” she said with a shrug. “But I think they heard Mom making breakfast. They know they can get her to ‘accidentally’ drop a couple of blueberries.”
“I can’t compete with that,” Mika said, giggling. She was stretched out on her twin bed, already in her pajamas. On the other side of the closed door, she could hear Andy talking to Devon about the clues they’d collected that day. Mika still had no idea what the random numbers meant. Together, Andy and Mika had filled their teammates in on the confrontation with Emma, and the texts she’d sent Mika later. After discussing it, Team MADR had agreed to put the weirdness behind them. Someone out there was trying to cheat, but none of them had any idea who it might be. So they were going to focus on finding the Gold medal—and getting the hints they needed to figure out which Olympic athlete was the Masked Medalist.
“You’re going to a fencing match tomorrow, right?” Riley asked, stifling a yawn. “I’m so jealous. I’m reading this fantasy book and last night I got to this part with the most amazing sword-fighting scene ever. It’d be awesome to see something like that in person.”
“I can’t wait,” Mika said. “Do you think you’ll be able to watch it on TV?”
“Dunno. But you’ll take pictures, won’t you?” Riley waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe get another billion Instagram followers, Miss Superfamous Enspire Photo-grapher?”
Mika made a face, half-pleased, half-embarrassed. “Are you kidding? I’m lucky my parents are still letting me go watch events at all, after what I did. If they thought I was still posting on Instagram, they’d probably take my phone away forever and lock me up in our hotel room for the rest of the trip!”
“They haven’t even made you delete the account,” Riley pointed out. “Maybe they won’t! Maybe they’ll change their rule!”
“Doubt it.” But Mika couldn’t help feeling a twinge of hope at Riley’s words. “So what are
you—”
She was cut off when the door flew open and Andy burst into the room, phone in one hand, Dad’s laptop precariously balancing in the other.
“Did you see this?”
He waved his phone at Mika, who blinked.
“See what?”
Andy sat on the edge of Mika’s bed. He set the laptop down and turned it to face her. On the screen, she saw Devon, bleary-eyed under his Dodgers baseball cap, eating a bowl of cereal.
“Hi again,” Mika said, turning her phone so that Riley could see Devon, too. Mouth full, he waved in response. “What’s going on?”
“Tyler and Emma posted on the OlympiFan forum,” Andy replied before reading from his screen. “‘Fellow players: After we found the Bronze, one of our accounts was hacked and someone saw the hints to the Masked Medalist’s identity that came with the medal. There is a player out there trying to cheat their way to victory—but we can level the playing field. Here are the hints that came with the Bronze medal. May the best player win.’”
Andy turned his phone so that Mika and Riley could see what was below the message:
“Whoa,” Mika said, mouth open. “I can’t believe Emma and Tyler did that.”
Crunching his cereal, Devon nodded in agreement. “I still think leaving those notes was a weird thing to do, but they seem really into the whole fair play thing.”
“Is that a butterfly?” Riley asked, and Mika moved her phone closer to Andy’s so her friend could get a better look.
“It is,” Andy confirmed. “A butterfly and the United Kingdom’s flag.”
“So does this mean the Masked Medalist is a Team GB athlete?” Mika asked eagerly. “And they, um . . . like butterflies? Oh! Andy, remember Paola? The cyclist at dinner the other night? She’s the one who found my phone—Mom said her nickname is Signorina Butterfly!” She expected Andy to look excited, or at least interested. But he just wrinkled his nose. “What’s wrong?”
“Well . . . maybe these are just more fake clues,” Andy said. “The notes were fake, after all.”
Riley winced. “Oh . . . I didn’t think about that.”
“I don’t know,” Mika said slowly. “That strategy was weird, but Emma and Tyler definitely seem to hate cheating. I don’t think they’d go this far.”
“And this is different from the notes,” Devon added. “It’s actually in the app. The Masked Medalist can see this message; if these aren’t really the hints that came with the Bronze medal, the Masked Medalist would probably disqualify Team Cryptic, right?”
Andy perked up. “Good point!” he said, thumbs already flying over his screen. “Let’s see if the Masked Medalist posted anything about this on Instagram yet . . .” He stared, brow furrowing in confusion. Mika leaned over to see his screen and gasped.
“So? Did they post?” Riley asked eagerly. Mika and Andy exchanged a dumbstruck look.
“No,” Mika said, still unable to believe what she was looking at. “The Masked Medalist’s posts are all gone.”
TEAM SUPERFAN CHAT ROOM
AgentAngel: Ummmm have you guys checked Instagram?
IronMatt: No, why? Another MM post?
AgentAngel: No . . .
SabineTheGreat: OMG!! They deleted all of their posts???
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ANDY
RANDOM NUMBERS DANCED in Andy’s vision. He saw them in his dreams, and they didn’t disappear when he woke up. He saw them while he brushed his teeth, he saw them while he ate his tamagoyaki for breakfast at the hotel, and he saw them in the taxi with Mom and Mika. Now, he even saw them as he sat in a dark arena, waiting for the next fencing match to begin. 38. 321. 207. 96. Team MADR had collected hundreds of them, and all the app did was sort them into a vertical line that just grew longer and longer and, to Andy, still had no meaning at all.
But they had to mean something. This was Andy’s last chance at figuring out once and for all who was behind OlympiFan and winning the beta tester spots. He tried to distract himself by thinking about the two hints Emma and Tyler had posted instead. A butterfly and a UK flag. The flag could mean the athlete was from the UK, or it could mean they competed in the Summer Games in London. As for the butterfly, Devon had spent some of their points on Paola Mazzanti’s video in the Gallery, while Riley had read dozens of interviews with the cyclist. They couldn’t find anything indicating she might have designed OlympiFan. But Linda McDouglas was British and Chiang Li had competed in London in 2012, so they were still at the top of Andy’s list.
“This is so cool,” Mika said, half standing out of her seat. They were in the first row near the center of the long, white strip that Mom said was called a piste. The ground was marked off with lines and illuminated with blue and pink lights like something out of a sci-fi movie. On either end, two women stood just in the shadows, wearing white jackets, pants, and gloves, and holding a mask and a saber.
“It is!” Wesley agreed. He and Hana were seated next to Andy and Mika. Wesley stood too, holding up his phone and taking a picture of the piste.
“Hey, you found your phone!” Mika said as Wesley sat back down. “Where was it?”
“Emi found it in the kitchen at Chef Abe’s restaurant,” Wesley told her, shaking his head. “I still can’t believe it.”
“I can,” Hana said dryly. “We did take a tour of the kitchen, after all. And you have a bad habit of leaving your phone lying around.”
“I didn’t put it down next to the stove.” Wesley let out a huffy sigh. “Seriously. You don’t think I’m that careless, do you?”
Andy and Mika laughed as Hana gave Wesley a look that clearly said she thought he was exactly that: careless.
Andy heard the announcer introduce the fencers—one from Italy, the other from Russia—but then he zoned out again, picturing numbers stacked on top of one another. If only there were a pattern to figure out! Like the Fibonacci sequence, where each number was the sum of the previous two. Or if they were all prime numbers, or if each were squared or cubed or . . .
Andy sighed, rubbing his eyes. There was a pattern, but it was the simplest one: numerical order. When he found the clue 135, the app slotted it between 132 and 138. And when he found 133, it was slotted between 132 and 135. He had no doubt that 134 was out there somewhere, and if his team found it, it would slot before 135. So far, Riley had found the highest number—321. How many clues were out there? Andy imagined collecting thousands of them, a ridiculously long line of numbers counting up and hinting at nothing.
No one would ever find the Gold medal, and the Masked Medalist’s identity would remain a secret. Maybe it would be a secret forever, seeing as they had deleted all of their Instagram posts. Andy fidgeted in his seat. Why had the Masked Medalist done that? Was it supposed to be a part of the game, another hint?
He felt his phone vibrate with a text and pulled it out of his pocket.
DC: HEY I finally got into the Imperial Palace Gardens and got a ton more clues, all just more numbers . . . EXCEPT
DP: @
DP: !!!
Glancing around, Andy held his breath as he responded.
AK: ???
DP: @
DP: That was the clue! Instead of a number! Must mean something, right? It’s the only symbol we’ve found!
AK: Where does the app sort it in the line?
DP: Between 242 and 255
AK: Ok
AK: Definitely means something
DP: BUT WHAT???
Andy frowned, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
“Nine minutes on the clock,” Wesley said suddenly, pointing to a digital clock at the end of the piste. “You know, I’ve never actually been to a fencing match before?”
“Really? I think this is one of the most exc
iting sports to watch in person,” Hana replied. “It’s a duel, but so graceful—sometimes I feel like I’m watching two people dancing, not fighting.”
“What are the rules?” Mika asked, leaning forward.
“The match lasts for three bouts, three minutes each,” Hana explained. “Or until one competitor scores fifteen points—a point for every touch they land on their opponent.”
“What if time’s up and they’re tied?” Wesley asked.
“A minute is added to the clock, and the first to score wins.”
“Even if it doesn’t add up to fifteen?”
Andy scrunched his nose. An idea was trying to form in his mind . . . But then the athletes were taking their places on opposite ends of the piste, and whatever realization Andy had been about to make vanished. A hush fell over the crowd as the match began.
For the next eight minutes, Andy forgot all about OlympiFan and the Masked Medalist. Two competitors, dressed all in white with mesh masks hiding their faces, took their places under the lights. At the signal, their silver sabers flashed as they darted back and forth on the piste in what looked like part duel, part choreographed dance—it really was like something out of a movie, only way cooler.
As the clock counted down the last thirty seconds with both athletes at thirteen points, the entire crowd seemed to hold its collective breath. Andy watched, mesmerized, as the competitors moved even faster, swiping, lunging, and dodging one another’s blows—
Bing! A chime sounded, and both athletes, breathing heavily, dropped their arms and walked back to the opposite ends of the piste.
Kudo Kids--The Mystery of the Masked Medalist Page 14