by Stuart Gibbs
That had not been my plan.
There was a thump from the end of the hall as an enemy agent banged into the door, followed by what I assumed were curse words in a language I didn’t know.
Two seconds later three high-powered flashlight beams flicked on at that end of the hall.
At the opposite end, three more flicked on.
Which meant I was now flanked by six heavily armed men in total darkness.
So I did the only other thing I could think of: I prepared to surrender.
I raised my hands over my head and backed against the principal’s door, accidentally bumping the handle.
It lowered with a click.
Apparently, I’d unlocked it.
All six flashlight beams swung toward the sound.
I slipped into the darkened office, slammed the door shut, and promptly ran right into a coffee table. It cut me off at the knees, and I face-planted on the carpet.
The lights snapped on again.
I reflexively tucked myself into a ball and yelled, “Please don’t kill me! I don’t know anything! I just started here today!”
“Begging for mercy?” said a disappointed voice. “That’s D-quality performance for sure.”
There were murmurs of assent.
I slowly lifted my eyes from the deep-pile carpet. Instead of a horde of assassins aiming guns at me, I found myself facing a conference table. Two middle-aged men and one middle-aged woman sat on the far side of it, shaking their heads as they jotted notes on legal pads. To the side stood Alexander Hale.
I heard an electronic hum behind me and glanced over my shoulder. There, a bank of monitors presented views of every place I’d been on campus.
I winced as understanding descended. “This was a test?”
“Lucky for you,” said the man in the center of the table, the owner of the disappointed voice. He was a stocky man who seemed to think he was more roguish than he truly was. His suit was dotted with food stains, his waistline stretched the fly of his pants to the breaking point, and though his hair was thick and perfectly coiffed, it was also quite obviously a toupee. “If this had been a real incident of external aggression, we’d be mailing your remains home in a doggie bag.”
“But I haven’t learned anything yet,” I countered. “I just got here.”
“I’m well aware of that,” the man snapped. “The SACSA exam is standard for all students upon arrival.”
I looked to Alexander for help.
“Survival and Combat Skills Assessment,” he explained, then turned to the panel. “I thought that trick he did with the reference book in the library was rather clever.”
“It was a lucky shot,” Bad Toupee said dismissively.
“And using the Taser on the keypad?” Alexander asked. “We’ve never seen that before.”
“For good reason. It was moronic.” Bad Toupee stood and fixed me with a hard stare. He had a slight tic—a twitch in his left eye—which seemed to be exacerbated by his anger. “I’m the principal of this academy. These are the vice principals, Agents Connor and Dixon. You’ve already met Alexander Hale . . . and, of course, Erica.”
I turned around. The girl was behind me. She had entered without making a sound.
I gave her a half wave hello but got nothing in return.
“I think we’re all in agreement that your performance today was deplorable,” the principal continued. “You’ve displayed amateur-level skills or worse in virtually every arena: unarmed combat, elusiveness, savoir faire . . .”
“Is there an essay portion of this test?” I asked hopefully. “I usually do well on those.”
The principal glared at me, his left eye twitching wildly. “You’re not so hot at knowing when to keep your mouth shut, either. Frankly, if you hadn’t done well on your STIQs and shown an extraordinary aptitude for cryptography, I’d be sending you right back home to Mommy and Daddy. But we’ll just have to see what we can make of you. You have a lot of work to do, Ripley. And, as of now, a D-minus average.”
With that, he waved me away dismissively.
I left the office, feeling hollow inside. I’d never had a grade lower than a B in my life—and that was an 89 in handwriting back in third grade.
I was also slightly confused by something the principal had said. I’d never known I had extraordinary cryptographic ability. In fact, despite my gift for math, I’d always found cryptography rather difficult. Math and logic will get you only so far with many codes; you also need to be good at wordplay. Which was why I could calculate exactly how many seconds I’d been at spy school so far (1,319) but still be stumped by the newspaper’s daily jumble on a regular basis.
There had been a few cryptography games on the CIA website. I was under the impression that I’d utterly failed at them, but perhaps they’d been designed to detect some latent skills that even I didn’t know about.
Erica stepped into the hall behind me.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, right?” I asked her. “I mean, I’ve had no training in anything yet. I’ll bet no one does well on this test when they first get here.”
“I aced it,” she told me. And then she left without so much as a good-bye.
Thus, a mere twenty-three minutes after my arrival at spy school, I had learned something extremely important about it: It wasn’t going to be easy.
INTIMIDATION
Armistead Dormitory
January 16
1750 hours
Moving from home to a boarding school where I didn’t know anyone would have been difficult under normal circumstances. After my frightening and humiliating initiation, however, it was traumatic. I was tempted to head right for the phone to call my parents and ask them to come pick me up, but then I realized a few things:
1. The SACSA exam was probably designed to weed out people. Being a spy wasn’t going to be all good times and glory. If I couldn’t handle a fake life-or-death scenario, how could I ever be expected to handle a real one?
2. I hadn’t made a very good impression on Erica, but if I left, that’d be the only impression I’d ever make on her. If I stuck around, I’d at least have a chance to recover.
3. Things couldn’t possibly get worse. Therefore, they had to get better.
So I decided to stick it out at spy school for at least a little while longer.
Immediately after being dressed down by the principal and blown off by Erica, I found my belongings piled in a slightly damp heap in the hallway outside the office with an orientation packet balanced atop them. Inside was my class schedule, a map of the campus with directions to my room, and a pamphlet detailing emergency procedures for everything ranging from poisoning to nerve gas attacks.
My room was on the top floor of Armistead Dormitory. All first years were sequestered up there. I originally presumed this might be nice, having a room up on top with a view, but this, like 100 percent of my presumptions about spy school, turned out to be wrong. The top floor was basically an attic that had been haphazardly divvied into cramped little rooms. Our dog got more space when we boarded him on vacation.
The walls were thin enough to hear through, and the ceiling, which was really the peaked roof of the building, slanted so precipitously that I could stand upright only in half the room. There was a small dormer window set into the slant, which let in a tiny bit of light and a staggering amount of cold air. Apparently, it had last been weatherproofed during the Kennedy administration. The furniture was army surplus, circa World War II: a spindly cot with a rock-hard mattress, a squat wooden night stand, an iron desk with corners sharp enough to put out an eye, a footlocker, and a folding chair.
There was no personal bathroom. Instead, there was a communal restroom at the far end of the hall with three ancient toilets that made disturbing noises when you flushed them and four showers that appeared to be a breeding ground for rare foot fungi.
There was a small communal lounge at the top of the stairs—a few tattered couches and a yard sale coffee table—b
ut since it was frigid on the floor, no one was hanging out there. I could hear some of my fellow students in their rooms, but none emerged to welcome me to spy school—or even say hello.
While I unpacked in my tiny room, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Mike.
How’s loser science school?
It was supposed to be a joke, but it made me feel lousy anyhow. Lousy and lonely.
Awesome.
I wrote back. The great thing about texting is, no one can ever tell when you’re lying.
Someone knocked at my door.
I jumped, startled. Most days I probably wouldn’t have, but I was a bit skittish after my initiation. I crept to the door and peered through the tiny peephole.
The kid in the hall looked as though he’d stepped off the cover of a glossy magazine. He was several years older than me, well past his awkward teenage phase. He had perfectly coiffed brown hair, a chiseled jaw, and broad shoulders. He wore an expensive sports coat over an even more expensive sweater. If you’d asked me to design the prototypical spy-to-be, I would have drawn him. He waved at the peephole knowingly. “Just open the door, Ben. I know you’re in there.”
I reached for the doorknob, then paused, wondering if this was another test.
“It’s not a test,” the guy outside the door said. “If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve kicked the door in thirty seconds ago. I’m just the welcome wagon.”
I opened the door.
The kid breezed in, flashing an acre of teeth as he grinned. “Still shaky after your SACSAs, huh? I get it. I was too. But you’ve got nothing to worry about from me.” He extended a friendly hand. “Chip Schacter. Nice to meet you.”
I shook it, pleased to finally meet someone friendly. “Ben Ripley. But I guess you knew that already.”
Chip laughed. “Yeah. Every student gets full dossiers on all the new meat. Yours was better than most, though.”
“It was?”
“Absolutely. Especially those cryptography scores.” Chip whistled appreciatively. “I haven’t seen cryptos like that since Chandra Shiksavelli . . . and she went right from here to being a Level 6 at the NSA.”
“Wow,” I said, trying to seem nonchalant, although I was secretly thrilled. I still wasn’t sure how I could be so skilled at cryptography and not know it, but it was nice to finally have some good news. For the first time since I’d arrived at spy school, I actually felt like I might belong there.
“Anyhow,” Chip went on, “your first days here can be pretty rough. I figured you could use a friend.”
“I could,” I admitted. “Thanks.”
“I’ll take you around, show you the ropes, introduce you to the right people. In a few days you’ll have this whole place wired. And all I ask for in return is a little favor.”
“That’d be great,” I said . . . and then caught myself. “What favor?”
Chip glanced out the door, as though to make sure no one was within earshot, then shut and locked it. “Nothing much. Just a little harmless computer hacking. The kind of thing friends do for each other all the time.”
Any enthusiasm I’d had seeped out of me like air from a punctured balloon. “Uh . . . I’m not so good at hacking.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can walk you through the toughest stuff. But there’s a rotating sixteen-character daisy-chain password protecting the firewall. I can’t crack it, but it ought to be a piece of cake for someone with your mad skills.” Chip patted me on the shoulder proudly, trying to bolster my ego.
The sad thing is, it sort of worked. I already knew this guy was trouble, and yet, somehow, I still wanted his approval. “What computer would this be?”
“Just the school’s mainframe. There’s some classified information I need to get off it for a class.”
“What kind of information?”
Chip’s face clouded. “What’s with all the questions? I’m trying to be a friend here, and you’re giving me the third degree.”
“Sorry, but . . . I just got here. I don’t want to do something that’s going to get me in trouble.”
“You know what’ll really get you in trouble? Making me an enemy rather than a friend. ’Cause I can be a real good friend . . . or a real bad enemy.” Chip’s muscles tensed, straining the seams of his sports coat.
I gulped. This was unbelievable. At regular school there was one thing I’d been exceptionally good at: avoiding bullies. (The trick was to blend into the crowd and let them pick out prey more obvious than you.) But now I hadn’t even made it to my first meal at spy school before one set his sights on me.
Worse, Chip Schacter wasn’t like a public school bully. Those guys were mostly out to cause you embarrassment rather than pain; the worst they might do was yank down your pants while the cheerleading squad was passing. There was something far more menacing about Chip. He was obviously after much more than my lunch money—and the penalty for standing up to him appeared to be pain.
“I don’t want to be your enemy,” I said, backing up as far as I could in my tiny room.
Chip’s muscles relaxed. He flashed a disingenuous smile. “Good to hear. Let’s get to it.” He ushered me toward the door.
I stayed put. “You want to do this now? I haven’t even unpacked.”
“Exactly. No one would ever expect you to do something like this yet. Plus, everyone will be in the dining hall. Dinner starts in five.”
“Just out of interest . . . is what we’re doing against the rules?”
“There are no rules at spy school.”
“So . . . if we get caught . . . ?”
“Ben, I’m your friend, right?”
“Right.”
“And friends look out for each other. I’m not gonna let you get caught.” Chip clamped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed, sending a shock of pain through my body. “Now, let’s stop gabbing like girls and go do this.”
He turned to the door, expecting me to follow. I immediately tried to assess what other options I had, but I couldn’t come up with any, other than fleeing through the tiny window in my room, which would have merely left me on a steeply slanted, icy roof four stories above the ground.
Going along with Chip didn’t seem much safer, however. I already knew not to trust him. If I screwed up hacking the computer—which I was bound to do, as I didn’t even know what a rotating sixteen-character daisy-chain password was, let alone how to decrypt one—Chip would certainly let me take the fall for it. Which meant I could be bounced from spy school within only hours of arriving.
While I dithered about this, Chip started out the door. As he grabbed the knob, there was a sudden sizzling sound, like that of a steak being dropped on a hot grill. Chip’s body went rigid and his hair stood on end while tiny blue bolts of electricity arced between his teeth. He finally managed a grunt of surprise, then collapsed, quivering, on my floor.
The door opened, and a boy about my age with a mop of dark hair draped over one eye peeked in. He prodded Chip with a foot to make sure he was unconscious, then held up a small device that he’d wired to the outside doorknob. “Palm-size Van de Graaff electrostatic generator. Very effective, but only for five minutes. If you want to stay in one piece, I suggest you get far away from here in that time.”
INFORMATION
Mess Hall
January 16
1820 hours
“Here’s the first thing you need to know about spy school: It sucks.”
Murray Hill, the kid who’d rescued me from Chip, crammed another forkful of spaghetti into his mouth. We were in the mess hall, which everyone simply called “the mess,” eating dinner. Most of the rest of the student body—three hundred students ranging in age from twelve to eighteen—were gathered in clumps around us. Though no one else had bothered to introduce themselves, everyone was obviously aware of my presence. Every time I glanced toward one of the clumps, I’d catch someone quickly averting their eyes from me.
The mess wasn’t terribly far from my room; it was right next to the dormito
ry. I’d been concerned that it was the first place Chip would come looking for me, but Murray claimed there was safety in numbers. And besides, he was starving.
“Everything you hated about regular school?” Murray went on. “We still have all of that here: rigid social cliques, lousy teachers, incompetent administrators, terrible food, bullies. And on top of that, occasionally, someone tries to kill you.”
Murray was thirteen and should have been a second-year student, but he’d been held back after flunking his self-preservation exam the spring before. During the final combat simulation, he’d accidentally shot off the principal’s toupee. (They were only using dummy bullets at the time, so the principal was unharmed, but his beloved hairpiece was damaged beyond repair.) Having to repeat his first year didn’t seem to bother Murray much, but then, nothing really seemed to bother Murray. Unlike everyone else in the mess, he didn’t appear to care how he looked—or what anyone else thought of him. Our fellow students sat ramrod straight and were impeccably dressed, as though concerned that someone might be grading them on their posture and grooming. For the most part, they wore pressed jeans and nice sweaters, clothes that looked professional but would also allow them to move freely in case of a sudden ambush. On the other hand, Murray seemed to be making a deliberate attempt at slovenliness. His hair was unkempt, his shirt was untucked, his sweatshirt was stained a dozen times over—and was currently getting a fresh coat of spaghetti sauce. He had the posture of a piece of wet linguine and his socks didn’t match. He was obviously intelligent, though, and when he had something to say—as he did now—he was determined to say it. I was having a hard time getting a word in edgewise.
“Wait,” I said. “You mean Chip was trying to—”
“Kill you? No. Then he wouldn’t have anyone left to intimidate. What’d he ask you to do?”
“Hack into the school mainframe.”
“For what?”
“‘Classified information.’ For one of his classes.”
Murray nodded knowingly. “Test answers, most likely. Chip’s tried to force virtually everyone here into helping him cheat one way or another.”