The Villain Virus

by Michael Buckley

  Brand grinned. “I’ll let it go this time. I’ve got four students up here and a lunatic throwing bombs everywhere.”

  “I know. We’re tracking your signal. You need to get to the Playground.”

  “What about the other students? Are they safe?”

  “The building has been evacuated, sir,” Benjamin said as another explosion rocked Brand’s eardrums. “Would you like to activate Protocol 49?”

  “What is Protocol 49?”

  “As acting director, you have the ability to force a complete lockdown of the school and control all the hidden systems within the building,” Benjamin explained.

  Brand grinned. “There are hidden systems? Like what?”

  “Laser cannons, sleeping gas, complete visual control—”

  “Activate Protocol 49 and lock down the school!” Brand shouted.

  Suddenly, a screaming siren filled the air. Flashing red lights popped out of the walls and steel panels slid down from the ceiling to cover the bathroom’s windows.

  “If you want to play with all the toys, you need to be in the Playground,” Ms. Holiday said. “Bring the kids with you.”

  “We’re on our way,” Brand said, just before another explosion.

  He opened the bathroom door and peeked into the hallway, gesturing for the delinquents to follow him.

  As they turned a corner, they saw Ms. Dove at the end of the hall, pounding on a classroom door. Brand hurried the boys in another direction.

  “Was that the principal?” one of the delinquents asked.

  Brand shushed him. At Locker 41 they stopped, and Brand turned to look at the small band of people depending on him. “I guess we’re going to have to redefine what the word ‘classified’ means around here. Get in.”

  “Huh?” the short one asked.

  “It’s the secret entrance to a spy headquarters buried far below the school. Watch.” He snatched the short boy by the arm and pushed him into the locker. Before the kid could protest, Brand slammed the door and waited a few seconds. When he opened it, the boy was gone.

  “Best. Day. Ever,” the three remaining troublemakers said, fighting to be next.

  One by one they entered the locker and vanished until Brand was alone. Just as he was about to squeeze himself inside, Ms. Dove stomped around the corner. Brand quelled his panic. Where was Flinch?

  “There’s my plover,” she said. “You’re supposed to be the bird that cleans up messes, but here you are, making one.”

  “Lady, you’ve taken this whole bird thing way too far,” Brand said.

  “Maybe you’re right, Janitor Brand, but there’s one thing you should never be confused about,” Ms. Dove said as she removed another one of her egg bombs from within her costume. “This is my nest.”

  Brand forced himself into the locker as the little egg began to hiss. He slammed the door shut, and as he fell, he heard an explosion. He hoped the woman hadn’t destroyed the entrance to the Playground. He also hoped she couldn’t squeeze into the locker in that ridiculous costume. As he was whisked through the tubes, he accessed the com-link.

  “Flinch! Are you OK, son?”

  “I’m fine, boss,” Flinch said.

  “I’m en route to the Playground now, along with a group of troublemakers I found trashing the bathroom.”

  “Oh, you’ve met my friends,” Flinch said. “Listen, the bombs are screwing with the electronics in my harness so it’s going to take me a while to stop Colonel Cuckoo.”

  “I think I can help,” Brand said as he floated down into the headquarters. Ms. Holiday and Dr. Kim were waiting with the boys and Benjamin. “All right, Benjamin, show me what to do.”

  “You’re the boss,” Benjamin said.

  A seat rose up out of the floor and Brand slid into it. Once he was comfortable, a touch-screen panel descended from the ceiling. He could see he had access to everything in the school: lights, water, power, even the air-conditioning. He also had access to a number of things he was surprised to know were buried in the walls, including an intercom system. He pushed that button first.

  “Ms. Dove, this is Mr. Brand,” he said as an image of the principal in her chicken suit appeared on-screen. She was stalking Flinch through the hallway, leaving a trail of feathers behind her.

  “Who said that?” she squawked.

  “It’s your plover bird, and I’m here to clean up a mess,” he said.

  “Where are you?” she cried.

  “Oh, somewhere safe.”

  “Get out of my school!” she cried. “This is my school!”

  Brand pushed a button on the panel and water showered down on the woman from the sprinklers in the ceiling. “No, Ms. Dove. This is my school.”

  The woman raced down the hall, only to come to a screeching halt when a panel slid open and fire cannons erupted, creating a wall of flames. She fell backward and raced in the other direction. The cameras followed her every step. Wyatt, Hooper, Toad, and Jessie hovered around Brand, eyeing the action.

  “What’s that button do?” Jessie asked, reaching out to touch it.

  “Stop! I don’t know what it does!” Brand snapped.

  “That releases a sleeping gas which renders everyone unconscious within thirty seconds,” Benjamin said.

  Brand eyed Jessie with a frown but pushed the button. Jessie chuckled, and together they watched a milky white gas seeping into the hallways.

  “Flinch, Ms. Dove is going to sleep for a while, and if you don’t want to join her I need you down here now,” Brand said.

  Flinch was already floating down from the top of the dome. “Already on it, Chief.”

  Brand watched Ms. Dove hobble down the hall, tossing her egg bombs in all directions. It was a desperate effort to create chaos, but the effects of the gas were already evident. She was slowing down and seemed confused. Finally, she stopped in the middle of her sprint to lazily flap her wings. “You won’t take this place from me,” she cried. “I’d rather destroy this nest than give it to another bird.”

  “Good night, Ms. Dove,” Brand said.

  But the woman had one last bomb. She removed it from her belt. This one was as big as a bowling ball.

  Brand scanned the panel for something to help. If that bomb was as powerful as it looked, it might take down the entire school—and the Playground below it—in one big blast.

  “Not that I know for sure,” Hooper said, “but I think this button here with the big hammer on it has potential.”

  Brand shrugged and pushed it. He watched on the view screen as a battering ram swung down from the ceiling. It slammed into Ms. Dove and knocked her down the hallway. The giant egg fell to the floor and lay still, as did Ms. Dove.

  Brand eased back into his chair and took a deep breath.

  “Good job, boss,” Hooper said.

  Brand rolled his eyes and then smiled. “You know, I’m starting to like middle school.”

  ALL RIGHT, MY LITTLE ATHLETE! LET’S GET BACK TO YOUR GRUELING PHYSICAL FITNESS EXAM. I’VE GOT ANOTHER STUNT … I MEAN, EXERCISE FOR YOU TO ACCOMPLISH.

  ONE HUNDRED SIT-UPS.

  OF COURSE YOU WANT WASHBOARD ABS—WHAT KID WOULDN’T? WELL, THEY DON’T JUST HAPPEN. IF YOU WANT TO BE THE LEAN, ATTRACTIVE PERSON I AM THEN YOU CAN’T WISH FOR IT—YOU HAVE TO WORK FOR IT.

  FIRST, LIE ON THE FLOOR AND PUT A BOOK ON YOUR BELLY. SECOND, SUPPORT YOUR NECK WITH A TOWEL TO PREVENT STRAIN. NEVER PULL ON YOUR NECK. THIRD, BEND YOUR KNEES. FOURTH, SIT UP AND FEEL THE BURN. BUT DON’T LET THE BOOK SLIP OFF YOU!

  YEAH! THAT’S IT! NO PAIN, NO GAIN, I’M JUST GOING TO SIT OVER HERE AND EAT MY ICE-CREAM CONE AND WATCH. WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED, RUB YOUR BELLY ON THE SENSOR SO I CAN GAUGE HOW WELL YOU DID.

  Flinch watched as Wyatt, Hooper, Jessie, and Toad raced around the Playground, fiddling with inventions and handling weapons they couldn’t possibly understand. Every once in a while there was a small explosion followed by a chorus of laughter. Brand looked like he was going to pull out his own hair.

>   “This place is awesome!” Wyatt said from somewhere in the science department. There was a crash and the sound of breaking glass. “Look at all this cool stuff!”

  “Are you sure having them here is a good idea?” Flinch asked his boss.

  “It’s a terrible idea,” Brand said. “But they’ve seen so much I can’t just let them go, and it’s too dangerous to have them running around in the school all by themselves. At least down here I can keep an eye on them.”

  “So you come down here and save the world every day?” Jessie asked Flinch.

  Flinch nodded. “They usually give us weekends off.”

  “Hey, what does this do?” Toad shouted. Flinch turned to see the boy hoisting Mr. Miniature’s shrink ray over his head.

  “Don’t touch that!” Brand cried, but he was too late. Toad zapped an entire section of desks, turning them dollhouse-size.

  “Cool!” the other boys said as they rushed to his side.

  “My turn!” Jessie shouted.

  “No! I found it! It’s my shrink ray. Get your own,” Toad said, wrestling the weapon away from his friend’s grabby hands.

  Flinch stepped in and took the ray gun from the boys. “You have to keep your hands to yourselves, guys,” he said. “Some of this stuff is pretty dangerous.”

  “Duh!” Hooper said. “That’s why it’s so cool.”

  “Could everyone just stop for a moment so I can hear myself think?” Brand shouted. “Benjamin, I need a report.”

  The blue orb floated out of the mission desk. After a few clicks the dome’s screen came to life with a hundred different news channels, all reporting on chaos at every corner of the Earth.

  “No way!” Wyatt said. “We’ve got to hook up a video game to this thing!”

  Flinch tried to tune the boys out and watch the screen.

  “It can now be confirmed that the epidemic has spread into the hundreds of millions. France, China, and Belgium have all declared a state of emergency. Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and Ireland have established martial law. All planes worldwide have been grounded. Trains are not running. Nearly every harbor on the globe is closed.”

  “Dudes! There’s a giant head over here,” Jessie shouted. He had slipped out of the main room while everyone was watching Benjamin’s report. Before Flinch could do anything, all four of the boys were racing down the hall and through the door that led to the holding cell. By the time he caught up with them, they were hooting and hollering as they gaped at Heathcliff’s disturbing form.

  “What is that thing?”

  “It’s like a hot-air balloon with a face.”

  “We have to take pictures!”

  “Hey! This room is off-limits,” Dr. Kim said. She and a handful of the remaining healthy scientists were working feverishly around the boy, clearly hoping for some kind of last-minute breakthrough. “Director Brand, Ms. Holiday, you have to get these kids out of here.”

  “We’re doing our best,” Ms. Holiday said. She and Brand each had a kid by the arm, but they were hard to move.

  “They’re like a bunch of excited puppies.”

  “Guys, you’ve got to go,” Flinch said. “That head is what is causing all the problems. You could get sick—”

  “Sick?” Hooper asked. “Is that what’s going on? Everyone is sick?”

  “Yes, now let’s go,” Brand said.

  “Is it bacterial or viral?” Hooper asked, causing everyone to look at him in amazement. “What? Just ’cause I’m a troublemaker, I have to be dumb? My dad’s a doctor.”

  “It’s like a virus, but it’s man-made,” Dr. Kim said.

  “Nanobots!” Wyatt said, which caused another ripple of surprise. “I watch a lot of sci-fi movies. So … those things are real?”

  Dr. Kim explained that the team called their technology nanobytes, and that these particular nanobytes were corrupt and were being controlled by the transmitter buried inside of Heathcliff’s brain. There was no way to shut the transmitter off without killing Heathcliff, and in his death throes he might send killing pulses out to everyone infected.

  “That’s wild, man,” Jessie said. “So the world is screwed. Are you sure you’ve got nothing in this place that can stop it?”

  “We’re out of good ideas,” Ms. Holiday said. “Unless you’ve got something brilliant to offer.”

  “You know what would be cool?” Toad said. “If it were me, I’d take that shrink ray and make myself real tiny and then inject myself into the big head’s bloodstream. Then I’d go in and turn off the transmitter.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Jessie said.

  There was stunned silence in the room for a long time.

  “Who are you kids?” Brand asked, then he turned to the scientists. “Could that work?”

  Dr. Kim shrugged. “Mr. Miniature managed to shrink people, and they seemed perfectly well when we got them back to their normal sizes. In this case, we’d have to shrink a person down to the microscopic level, but—”

  “If they went in his body, they would suffocate immediately,” another scientist argued.

  “Not if we shrunk an oxygen tank with them,” Dr. Kim said. “If we equipped this person with the right tools, it’s entirely plausible that he could reach the transmitter and shut it off without harming Heathcliff or anyone else.”

  “Make it happen,” Brand said. “It’s the best idea we have.”

  “Which, may I point out, was my idea. I’m, like, a genius,” Toad said. Then he lifted his leg and farted.

  The other boys roared with laughter.

  “Classic,” Flinch said, surrendering to the giggles himself. This only made the boys laugh harder.

  Immediately, the scientists went to work putting together the plan. They ran to the farthest reaches of the Playground, collecting tools and equipment. They went through all the gizmos, gadgets, and gear the team had at its disposal.

  Eventually, everyone was ready, and the team assembled in Heathcliff’s holding cell. Next to his gigantic head was a large contraption made up of a huge tank filled with liquid, a series of tubes that led from the tank to a hypodermic needle, and Mr. Miniature’s shrink ray on a stand facing the tank. Next to this, several bizarre suits hung from a clothing rack. They were part scuba gear, part astronaut uniform, and they looked like something a Martian might wear in an alien invasion movie. Flinch marveled at the setup, even if he wasn’t quite sure how it all worked.

  “We had to raid a few other experiments, but we’re happy to report that everything we needed was at hand,” Dr. Kim told the small remaining group. “Best of all, we have these containment suits designed by Dr. Charnoff, who, unfortunately, was infected yesterday. He built about a dozen prototypes—”

  “Prototypes … as in untested?” Ms. Holiday asked. “Do we really want to send someone on a mission with untested equipment?”

  Dr. Kim nodded. “I’m afraid they’re our best option. They were designed for space missions, and so they’re airtight, which will keep whoever goes in safe and sound. Plus, they generate a low-level deflection technology, a sort of force field, that may help keep away trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble could there be in a body?” Flinch asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know—maybe like a million different things,” Hooper said. “The acid inside the stomach could eat through the person’s skin within minutes, there are substances on the tongue that could dissolve you, or white blood cells that could attack you and rip you apart. Whoever goes in is going to face a lot of danger.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Dr. Kim said, impressed. “But Dr. Charnoff’s suit also has a few gadgets that will help. There are harpoon guns in both the arms and legs. These can be fired into the walls of the circulatory system to keep our hero from being swept away by the bloodstream. Then there’s a laser inside the right glove that can be used to slice open passages from one organ to another. It was originally designed as a welding tool, but, shrunk down, it’ll be so small that it shouldn’t cause
any real damage to Heathcliff.”

  “So how’s the person going to get in?” Flinch asked as he studied the equipment.

  “This is the really brilliant part. While wearing the containment suit, the agent will be placed in this tank of saline. The beam will shrink its contents, which will then fill up this hypodermic needle. Then I will inject it into Heathcliff, and the hunt for the transmitter will begin.”

  “And how does this person get out of Heathcliff?” Ms. Holiday asked.

  Dr. Kim smiled. “That’s the most important question, right? We don’t want our hero floating around inside of Heathcliff for the rest of his or her life. We’ve created a timer system for the miniaturization process. We’re going to set it for two hours, which should be plenty of time to complete the mission. When the time is up, the agent should be inside one of Heathcliff’s pores or in his nostril or mouth. Then the process reverses.”

  “Why a timer? Why can’t one of us flip the switch and just make the agent big again?” Brand asked.

  “We may all be infected by then,” Dr. Kim said. “It’s a backup plan, in case no one’s capable of operating the ray gun.”

  The crowd was quiet for some time before Brand spoke. “Will this work?”

  “I believe it can, if things go well,” Dr. Kim said. “But it’s not without obstacles. First, Heathcliff’s body had to go through massive mutations to make his head this enormous. Organs, skeletal structure, the entire cardiovascular system have been moved in all directions to make room for his massive brain. And then there’s the problem of who to send.”

  “That’s already settled,” Brand said as he hoisted himself onto his feet with the help of his cane. “I’m going to do it.”

  “Alexander, you can’t!” Ms. Holiday said. “Send me. I can handle this.”

  Brand shook his head. “I can’t lose you.”

  “I’ll go! That would rule!” Toad cried. The rest of his friends volunteered as well.

  “This argument is moot,” Dr. Kim said. “We have to assume that almost everyone in this room is infected with the nanobytes. We can’t send anyone in that might succumb to its effects.”