The Mouse Watch, Volume 1

by J. J. Gilbert

  She arrived at room 177 breathing hard. And even though she was one minute and fifteen seconds late, everybody noticed.

  That was because the only one already there was Jarvis. The lanky teenage rat glanced at the digital clock mounted up on the wall of the gleaming conference room as Bernie made her breathless entrance. He was also wearing a yellow jumpsuit—one that had been outfitted with a hood.

  Then, to her surprise, he offered his paw.

  “We haven’t officially met,” he said shyly. “I’m Jarvis. You’re Bernie, right?”

  Bernie didn’t shake his paw at first. The terrible dream she’d had the night before came rushing back, and she was reminded again about the awful Saturday her brother had been taken away from her. She glanced at his paw and then back up to his face, noticing that the flop of blond hair failed to hide the earnest expression in his eyes.

  “Riiiight,” she said awkwardly, gripping his paw and releasing it quickly.

  She felt really uncomfortable shaking hands with a rat. She knew that she wasn’t the most sociable person in the world, but if it had been anyone else she felt she could have mustered up at least a little bit of niceness. The fact that Jarvis was a rat really bothered her. Not only that, but what if he was the secret R.A.T.S. operative in the base? Why was he here and how could he possibly be trusted?

  Well, I guess they know what they’re doing, thought Bernie. Who am I to question? If they’ve decided to make him a recruit and he’s obviously a rat, then Gadget must think he’s okay.

  She shot Jarvis a quick sideways glance. Doesn’t mean that I have to like or trust him, though.

  A familiar voice interrupted the awkward moment. Alph came bounding in through the door in the back of the room, gesturing broadly.

  “Welcome, new recruits!” she said happily. Then she added, “You’re not as big a crowd as our last batch, but it’s quality over quantity, am I right?”

  Bernie thought about how many yellow jumpsuits she’d seen yesterday. Was it unusual that there were only two recruits rather than dozens? She was about to ask, when Alph reached out to Jarvis, shaking his paw.

  “You must be Jarvis! Welcome! My name’s Alph, I’ll be your tactical trainer.”

  Jarvis took her paw and shook it. Bernie wasn’t sure, but she thought he looked grateful to have been welcomed so warmly. Alph turned to Bernie and offered a friendly wink.

  “Good to see you again, Bern!”

  “Hey, Alph!” said Bernie. She was relieved to see a familiar face.

  Alph grinned back at her as she walked over to a panel on the wall and waved her paw over a scanner. As a huge high-definition flat screen descended from the ceiling, she motioned for Bernie and Jarvis to take seats at the conference table.

  “You’ve each been chosen for specific reasons. You both have skills that have been noticed by the Watch. The testing that you’ll undergo in the upcoming weeks will determine if you can integrate those skills into our organization,” said Alph. “For example, one of you is particularly good with hacking codes. In fact, your abilities registered so far off the scale, we’d never seen anything like it.”

  Bernie felt a glow of pride. She was about to thank Alph for the compliment when the red-haired mouse turned to Jarvis and smiled. “You really have a spectacular gift, Jarvis.”

  The lanky rodent blushed.

  Bernie tried to keep her jaw from hitting the floor.

  “Wait,” she said. “I thought I was here for that…”

  Alph chuckled. “Well, you’re good at puzzles, that’s true. After all, you figured out the one on the recruitment gear. However, that’s not the reason we chose you.”

  She turned toward the big flat screen and said, “Pull up video eleven forty-three, alpha plural alpha.”

  The hi-def screen flared to life, and seconds later, security-cam footage of Bernie’s ill-fated zip-line attempt with Poopie appeared. Bernie watched, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, as the incident replayed in front of Jarvis and Alph, both of whom chuckled when she and Poopie crashed into the trash can at the end.

  “Ouch!” said Alph with a laugh.

  “Were you okay?” asked Jarvis.

  “Broke my leg,” mumbled Bernie. She was feeling embarrassed, confused, and angry because her massive fail had been seen by the Mouse Watch. She’d thought that the footage had been destroyed when her parents’ smartphone had broken, but apparently, the Watch had access to her neighborhood’s security-camera footage.

  Alph noticed that Bernie looked angry, and she smiled good-naturedly. “What you did back there took an incredible amount of courage. It’s one of the values we rely on here.”

  Bernie felt a little better but not much. “Yeah, but I blew it at the end.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Alph with a shrug. “Here we can train you to be better at doing things like that, but we can’t teach someone to have guts.”

  Alph gestured at the flat screen and said, “Play video one.”

  The conference room lights automatically dimmed.

  Then, after a few seconds of black on the screen, a low, ominous chord vibrated across the room.

  BOOOM! A fiery explosion filled the screen.

  A Mouse Watch recruit came flying toward the camera in slow motion holding a helpless mouseling that he was rescuing from the fiery blaze. A techno beat began its rhythmic thumping, accompanied by a pulsing synthesized track.

  Then a montage of dynamic training exercises played on the screen. A woman’s voice, low and intense, described all the qualities that the Mouse Watch stood for and their storied history, from the early days of the Rescue Rangers to Gadget’s incredible elite spin-off organization.

  “We need a special kind of mouse,” said the voice. “One that is ready to push themselves to the limit.” Bernie watched as a team of cadets rappelled down a cliff, sharks circling in the waters below. “A mouse that will rush into danger if it means helping someone in need.”

  Bernie saw that there was a small boat with an old fishermouse stranded in shark-infested waters. The intrepid mice grabbed the helpless old rodent and, after strapping him to a gurney, towed him carefully skyward, up, up, up to the waiting drone, narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of the great white sharks below. The relieved fishermouse thanked his rescuers, who nodded and gave him an encouraging pat on the back.

  “We want mice who care, mice who want to see the world become a better place. From the small scale…”

  Two agents helped a stranded bird with a broken wing, not concerned in the slightest that once it healed it might grab their tails in its beak and fly away. Despite its size, the animal was afraid and needed help, and they showed no hesitation.

  “To important global issues…”

  There were digital simulations, with mice wearing haptic gloves and virtual-reality gear. There were mock intelligence briefings with genius-level code-breaking classes.

  Then a spinning globe appeared, with digital bubbles popping up all over the world. They were text messages, each one sent from a Mouse Watch agent back to HQ. Bernie tried to read as many of them as she was able to, but they popped up so fast, she could only make out a few of the messages.

  Rescued a lost human child, mission accomplished.

  Stopped a R.A.T.S. agent from infiltrating Buckingham Palace, ready for next assignment.

  Helped a hurt Andean condor mend its wing. Hatchlings have their mother back.

  Need more intel on something called KRYPTOS, please advise.

  The voice continued, “Every sixty seconds a Mouse Watch agent reports in from somewhere around the world. The missions can be as simple as helping an elderly person cross the street to thwarting dangerous R.A.T.S. operatives. No matter what the need, there’s an agent nearby to answer the call for help.”

  The montage ended with rapid-fire clips of agents doing good deeds all over the world, from helping build a well for a thirsty village to capturing criminals. The images sped by faster and faster, ending wit
h a thunderclap and the silhouette of a dozen new recruits standing on a mountaintop, all looking tough and fearless.

  When the footage was over and the lights in the conference room came back up, Jarvis and Bernie spontaneously applauded. They couldn’t help it. The entire presentation had left Bernie feeling excited, moved, and inspired. These were exactly the kind of mice she wanted to be like, mice she could look up to. She was determined to try her best to live up to their expectations.

  Bernie wondered how on earth she could ever become someone so incredible! She knew the Watch was good, but these guys seemed like superheroes.

  Alph grinned at Bernie’s awestruck expression and patted the young recruit on the back.

  “You and Jarvis are going to be a team while training. It’ll take some work, so we recommend learning to rely on each other’s skills,” she said.

  Bernie bristled. She glanced at Jarvis and said quietly, “No offense, but I’d rather do this alone.”

  Alph shrugged. “It’s not a choice, rookie.”

  “But he’s not a mouse…shouldn’t we be dealing with someone more trustworthy?” Bernie began, but Alph held up her hand, interrupting her.

  “I don’t want to hear it, rook. He’s been vetted by the Watch and that’s good enough for you, got it?” said Alph.

  “And I’m standing right here, you know,” said Jarvis quietly.

  Bernie didn’t apologize and she didn’t make eye contact. She felt a little embarrassed at getting a lecture from Alph, but she still couldn’t bring herself to accept having a rat training with her. This was supposed to be the best time of her life!

  The red-haired agent gestured to a door in the back of the room and said with her clipped British accent, “If you’ll both just go through that door and step onto the conveyor, you’ll be taken through a brief orientation. After that, you’ll be ushered to your first recruitment challenge.”

  She grinned at Bernie and said, “And remember what I said about having guts? Well, soon it’ll be your chance to prove to us you really have them.”

  Bernie wasn’t exactly sure what she expected when she went through the door, but all thoughts about being upset with Jarvis immediately left her when she walked inside the mysterious room. It was mostly a flat gray color. But in the center of the room were two hydraulic arms with harnesses attached to them. Bernie had no idea what they were for until Alph handed a VR helmet and a pair of haptic gloves to each of them.

  “Go ahead and strap yourselves into the simulation rigs and put on the gloves and helmets. You guys are in for one of the most amazing experiences you’ve ever had.”

  “Motion-controlled VR?” asked Jarvis as he buckled himself into the riding harness nearest to him.

  Alph smirked. “This is way beyond any virtual-reality system that the humans have developed. The experience you’ll get from this will be so unforgettable that you’ll never think about VR the same way again. Gadget has really developed something special. You guys all set?”

  “Yeah!” Bernie said excitedly. “Is it a game? Are there points?” Once again, she didn’t make eye contact with Jarvis when she said this, but she was eager to compete against the rat so that she could prove she was the better candidate.

  “Just follow the leader’s prompts. It’s a rescue simulation but that’s all I’m going to tell you,” Alph said with a wink.

  Bernie watched as she went to a hidden panel on the wall and opened it with a quick rap of her knuckles. She pressed her hand to a sensor and the lights dimmed until the entire room was plunged into darkness.

  Bernie lowered the visor on her helmet and saw a tiny cursor blinking in the corner of her view screen.

  “Good luck!” said Alph. And as the senior Watcher left the room, a low, ominous drone filled the air.

  Bernie’s pulse quickened. Inside the gloves she wore, her paws were sweaty.

  The screen went white and the droning music around her swelled. She felt the hydraulic arm that held her begin to rise off the floor, and as it did, the music seemed to go right along with it, rising, rising and then reaching a long, harmonic crescendo that made the hair on her arms and neck stand on end.

  The music ended. The room shook. Then, suddenly, she could hear and see explosions all around her as a Mouse Watch agent appeared, shouting, “Follow me, recruit! There’s a massive earthquake in southern California and we need to rescue an entire city. Hurry!”

  Without thinking, Bernie ran after the agent. Everything felt so real she didn’t even realize that her feet were just churning in midair. As she moved, the hydraulic arm that held her responded to every movement, and the sights and sounds, along with the sensations in her fingertips, convinced her brain that what she was seeing was really happening. She could smell the burning rubber, smoke, and broken gas lines.

  I’ve got to get there in time!

  It was the only thought on her mind as she dodged falling lampposts, massive crevices in the sidewalk, and the glass from shattered windows that rained down all around her. A blast of heat singed her whiskers as a pipe burst on her right, catapulting a manhole cover thirty feet into the air. Bernie reflexively leaped out of the way in the nick of time, but a heavy piece of asphalt hit her on the left wrist and she yelped in pain.

  “OW!”

  “Steady, recruit!” shouted the agent. Bernie was doing her best to keep up with him, focusing on his black jumpsuit with red trim as he darted between the feet of the towering humans, all of whom were screaming and running around in a wild, uncontrolled panic.

  Bernie dodged the stampeding feet and tried to keep her balance on the constantly shifting streets. She felt beads of cold sweat on her forehead, and her heart was thumping so wildly she thought it might fly right out of her chest.

  It’s just a simulation! She kept repeating the words over and over in her mind, but it seemed like something abstract, a thought that at that moment argued against all her senses.

  The agent in front of her took a quick read of a crumbling apartment building through his goggles, his head bobbing from side to side as he scrolled through the data that was racing across his view screen. Turning to Bernie, he said, “There’s a mother and her baby on the third floor. The smoke is so thick that if we don’t get there in the next ten seconds, they won’t make it. The elevator isn’t working so you’ll have to use the fire escape. GO!”

  He waved Bernie to the iron stairway next to the building. Bernie raced up the stairs, which would normally be too tall for her since they were built for humans. But because her adrenaline was so high, she leaped up each one with an amazing burst of strength, surpassing what she’d have ever thought possible athletically just a few moments before.

  Pretty good for a pint-size mouse, she thought proudly.

  She reached the third floor and saw, to her relief, that a window was cracked open. The opening was too small for a human—but perfect for a mouse. She slipped easily inside the room.

  On the screen of her goggles a small map appeared with an infrared display of the room indicating where the mother mouse and her baby were located. She launched off her hind legs toward them, but the floor gave way beneath her! Bernie grabbed on to the splintered wood, struggling not to fall down through the gaping hole and into the inferno below.

  “Help!” the mother cried.

  “I’m trying!” Bernie shouted through the noise of the roaring fire and snapping wood. Then, through the fire, a hulking figure appeared above her. Bernie was about to scream when a large paw extended her way.

  “Grab on!” a voice called. It was Jarvis!

  Bernie’s heart raced. He was her partner—she was supposed to trust him. But he was a rat—and Bernie had spent her whole life distrusting rats….

  And then, just as she reached out her paw…

  …the screen suddenly went black.

  All sounds stopped.

  A deafening silence filled the simulation room, punctuated by her own quick breathing. Was it over? It seemed like a strange
way to end the simulation. Maybe by not immediately trusting Jarvis, she had lost?

  “How’d I do?” she asked tentatively.

  “What’s happening?” said Jarvis.

  Bernie removed her helmet, but it didn’t help much. The entire room was pitch-black, and her paws were dangling in space.

  “Maybe it’s still part of the test,” Bernie reasoned.

  Jarvis’s voice floated back to her out of the darkness, “I…don’t think so. That felt like a programming glitch to me.”

  Her instincts told her that something was definitely “off.” They really shouldn’t be stopped here for so long.

  “I think something’s wrong,” said Jarvis. “I don’t like how dark it is in here! Aah! Is that a spider?”

  “Calm down,” said Bernie. “I’m sure it’s not that big of a deal.”

  Bernie’s ears pricked up as she heard muffled shouts coming from outside the room. And was that the sound of an alarm going off?

  There was no way to tell how high she was in the darkness, but seeing no other choice, Bernie forced the buckle open on the harness. She fell for what felt like the length of an entire apartment building—which must have only been about a foot—and landed pretty gracefully on all four paws. She hoped that she was right about all this being nothing, but, just in case…

  “Wait, where are you going? Are you leaving?” asked Jarvis. “Shouldn’t we stay here until Alph gets back? What if we get caught? I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “I’m going to find out what’s going on,” said Bernie. “Come or stay, it’s up to you.”

  Jarvis hesitated.

  The fear of being left alone seemed to trump whatever fear he had about breaking the rules, and he pushed his own buckle open and followed Bernie after falling awkwardly to the ground. The two felt their way through the darkness, to the door that Alph had exited earlier.

  “It’s locked,” said Bernie, trying the handle.

  “Maybe there’s another exit?” squeaked Jarvis in a high, shaky voice. “Are we trapped in here?”