by M. E. Castle
“Looks peaceful enough,” said Dr. X.
“Let’s do a quick search,” said Amanda. “We’ve got a lot of ground left to cover.”
Fisher led FP far into the stacks, running his hand along the book spines, occasionally checking behind one that looked out of place or at a different angle from the others. The others split up to look around the reference desk and the computers. FP whined a little, and Fisher reached down to scoop him up.
“We’re doing our best, boy,” he said. FP kept whining as the rest of the crew caught up to them.
“Anything?” said Alex.
“Nothing,” said Fisher. “FP, would you please stop …”
Then he heard something, like a faint series of clanks. FP whined a little louder. The others froze.
Then a single, great clank shook the floor.
“Run,” Alex breathed out, barely above a whisper.
The world came crashing down.
Every single eight-foot-high bookshelf in the library began toppling as if a well-coordinated team of invisible giants were shoving them over. The way out of the stacks was impassable. They barely got out of the space they’d been in before one huge shelf smashed into the other and sent it reeling in turn.
The shelves fell in all directions, like dominoes that could push back. They fell forward, back, left, right, in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. Then Fisher realized: the shelves weren’t just falling. They were moving. Three’s technology was at work here. Each shelf had an antigravity generator attached to its underside. They could hover a few inches above the ground and move at will.
They could go on the attack.
The group ducked one way and dodged another, leaping over the tons of oak that splintered to the floor all around them.
A huge shelf unit crashed to the floor, and cut Fisher, FP, and Veronica off from the rest of the group. Fisher looked through a tiny gap at Alex.
“We can’t get to you!” he shouted above the apocalyptic din.
“We’ll find our own way out!” Alex screamed back. “Save yourselves!”
Two massive shelves were teetering toward them. Fisher spun around, searching for a way out. There were obstacles behind them and on both sides. If these two shelves fell on them, they’d be completely trapped, assuming they even survived the impact.
“Fisher!” Veronica screamed, unable to get anything else out.
Then Fisher spotted something bolted to the ceiling ahead. It was a steel bar used to mount a projector.
He whipped his elastic necktie from his backpack and offered it to FP, who clamped it firmly in his mouth. Then Fisher pointed to the bar.
“Through the hoop, boy!” he said. “And I hope you find our friends on the other side!”
Fisher lifted FP over his head, drew his arms back as far as he could, and threw the pig with all of his strength. FP sailed into the air and opened up his foreleg gliding wings. He sped between the bar and the ceiling, the stretchy tie trailing him. It folded around the bar and disappeared out of sight.
The shelves began to tip.
“Fisher!” He heard Alex bellow. “We’ve got it! Go!!”
Fisher gave the tie a quick tug, and the bar held firm.
“Hold on,” he said to Veronica. He stepped back as far as he could, and the tie stretched even more, like an expanding spring. Veronica grasped the tie with one hand, and put her other arm around Fisher’s waist. Then she gave him a hasty peck on the cheek.
“For luck,” she said, with a terrified smile. Fisher felt a rush of heat. Veronica’s arm was like a magic belt of courage around his waist.
“Three steps,” he rushed out as the shelves began to fall. “Then jump!”
The tie pulled them forward as they took three running steps and then leapt as hard as they could. The tie held. They were airborne. Air blew past Fisher’s face, and Veronica’s arm tightened almost too much for him to breathe. His trailing foot cleared the top of a falling shelf by less than an inch.
And then they were out. They saw Amanda, Dr. X, and Alex holding on to the tie with all of their strength. Slowly, it stretched out again, and lowered Fisher and Veronica to the floor. The crashing sounds had stopped. Everything that could fall had fallen. Fisher and Veronica let go and collapsed. FP ran over and started nuzzling and licking Fisher’s face.
“That’s … the third time you’ve saved my life, boy,” Fisher said, scratching the little pig’s head. “I’m glad you accept thanks in popcorn. I’ll make sure we never run out again.”
I can’t count the number of times I’ve saved your bacon.
—Hal Torque, brief sidekick to Vic Daring
I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you can’t count to two.
—Vic Daring, Issue #129
Alex helped Fisher up. Amanda lent Veronica an arm.
“I say we make for the science lab,” Alex said. “We need to double our firepower, quick.”
“Sounds good,” said Fisher. “Let’s hurry.”
They ran out of the library and down the hall. FP and Wally kept up, their little legs pounding the tile floor like pistons.
“Down!” Amanda shouted. As one, the group crouched, just in time for a hail of extremely sharp number 2 pencils to spit from the lockers on their left and smack into those on the right. Fisher noticed a broken piece of thin, clear wire on the floor. Amanda must have tripped it.
“Clear!” she shouted, and they moved on.
They took a left turn at the hallway that would take them to the science lab, their eyes shifting back and forth, looking for the next trap.
“Heads up!” came Amanda’s commanding voice as the squeak of wheels sounded from the end of the hall.
“Is that …,” said Alex.
“Yeah,” said Amanda, her eyes widening with dread. “Cafeteria cart.”
“I guess all the best artists steal ideas,” Alex said as the cart barreled along toward them. Mounted on the cart, rigged to face forward, were eight toasters. The powerful smell of smoke and carbon residue assaulted their nostrils.
Fisher had seen at least one kid break a molar on the cafeteria’s toast, so he knew enough to take the threat seriously.
“To the side!” Amanda shouted as a rapid clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink filled the hallway. Fisher threw himself left with Veronica and Alex as Dr. X and Amanda went right. The projectiles sailed past them—charred, withered pieces of what could be called bread in the same way that a puddle of crude oil could be called a dinosaur.
The blackened toast bullets whizzed safely past, but the cart barreled on toward them. And now two more carts came into view close behind. The first had nearly reached them when Dr. X shouted to Fisher.
“Fisher! The tie! Throw me the tie!”
Fisher did, so that the tie stretched across the hallway.
“Everyone, hold tight!” Dr. X shouted. Amanda got a firm grip on his end of the tie as Alex and Veronica added their efforts to Fisher’s.
The cart hit the tie, and Fisher strained against the pressure. The cart stretched the tie out, and out, and out … until finally, it could stretch no more. Then all of that wound-up energy was released in a deafening snap as the tie, like a giant slingshot, catapulted the cart back the way it had come, crashing into the other two and landing all three of them in a pile of spinning wheels and squeaking axles.
“Good work,” said Dr. X, and Fisher, for just an instant, saw a glimmer of the teacher he used to admire so much.
“Two doors down,” Amanda said, hopping to her feet. “Move! Move!”
They dashed the final distance in a wild sprint and dove into the room. Veronica pulled the door closed behind them just as another pencil volley embedded itself in the door’s other side.
Everyone sat still for a minute. Even Amanda was completely out of breath.
“We made it,” Alex said, panting. “Everybody okay?” The others nodded in reply, and both animals squeaked.
Amanda took in a shuddering brea
th. “Three’s got us right where he wants us. If we don’t hunt him down soon, it’s only a matter of time before he gets bored and orders all of the Fisher-bots outside to come in and finish us off.”
“Yes,” said Veronica, opening Ms. Snapper’s desk drawers and rifling through them. “This is exactly how Three wants us. Running, tired, scared, not thinking before we act. We need to calm down and restrategize.”
“We don’t have that kind of time,” Amanda argued. “For all we know, a hundred Fisher-bots are about to kick down that door right now.”
“And our door, Fisher,” Alex said, standing up and rifling through a chemical storage cabinet, the very cabinet that Fisher had once hidden in to escape the Vikings. Back when there was no Two, let alone Three, and Dr. X had been meek, friendly Mr. Granger.
“But if we don’t take a moment to get organized,” Fisher said, “we’ll never find him, and we’re doomed, anyway.”
“Wait!” said Dr. X. Everyone turned to look at him as he scratched his beak of a nose in thought. “You are both correct. On the one hand, simply running around blindly, hoping to bump into Three is a foolish plan. On the other, our position here in the middle of his forces is not the place to stop and regroup. However, I can offer a compromise. A way to find out what we need, and quickly.”
“Go on,” said Fisher, raising an eyebrow suspiciously.
Dr. X walked over to the glass tank where Einy and Berg scurried around. As soon as they saw him, they started clambering at the wall. He opened the top and they scurried up onto his arms.
“Einstein and Heisenberg are not ordinary mice,” Dr. X explained. “I modified them with several genes from other species. Including scent genes from a bloodhound.” He lifted them to his face and they pawed at his cheeks affectionately. “They could track a freshly bathed, hairless cat through a mountain pass in the middle of a blizzard. If Three is here, they will find him.”
Dr. X held the mice out to Fisher and let them smell him, then did the same with Alex. He held them near his face as he walked over to a small air vent, holding them in one hand and petting them with the other. Then he made a series of complex chittering sounds at them. They seemed to understand, and took off through the vent.
“You … speak mouse?” Amanda said.
“Yes, of course,” said Dr. X, deadly serious. But his frown started to crack, and he broke into hearty laughter. “Don’t be silly. Mice don’t have a language. But I find if you make sounds like theirs, they’re more inclined to like you.”
He chuckled.
Someone else chuckled, too.
Fisher looked around. No one else was laughing.
The chuckling was coming from above them.
Suddenly, the plaster ceiling tiles at the far end of the room burst apart into chips and dust as a person fell through them, landing on a lab table and knocking over a set of beakers.
Einy and Berg were crawling all over him, tickling him with their paws. He managed to flick them off, and stood up to his full height. He wasn’t any taller than Alex or Fisher, but there was a menacing power to him that made him seem six feet tall.
And his eyes. His terrible, wintry eyes, which made Fisher feel like a bacterium under a microscope.
“Looks like you got me,” said Three, baring his teeth, which looked sharp enough to slice through leather. “Exactly as I had planned.”
It’s tough being the middle child. Especially when the eldest grew you in a tube and the youngest tried to kill you.
—Alex Bas, Journal
“I suppose this wouldn’t be the best time to point out you just crushed a very valuable set of beakers,” said Dr. X. “Imported. Do you know how much it costs to ship glass?”
Fisher looked to Amanda and Alex. Their faces were set and grim. Veronica’s eyes were wide, her expression taut with fear.
This was it. The chance to end it.
Or the chance that Three would end it.
“I’m impressed,” said Three. “You’ve gotten farther than I expected you to.” He held some kind of remote in one hand—probably the way he was controlling the Fisher-bots. “I’ve been here for some time, living in the rafters and ducts, out of sight. Watching all of you go about your purposeless lives. Slowly working up a plan to exploit your weak, bendable minds. With the resources available to me after I deposed Dr. X, it was easy enough to purchase an unused factory building in a distant, remote location and remake it to serve my purposes.
“And while my army was under construction, I was content to make my hiding place here. Before leaving Los Angeles, I had attached my signal-hacking device to the studio broadcasting Family Feudalism. Once in hiding here, I activated it, observing the havoc my mind-altering signal worked, up close and personally.”
Three’s thumb made a subtle move on the control remote. Faintly, through the school’s walls, Fisher heard footsteps. Hundreds of footsteps.
Suddenly, a Vic Daring storyline in which Vic accidentally unleashed a rapidly multiplying insect army, and then had to spend months fighting against it and repairing the damage it caused, popped into Fisher’s head. At the end of the story, Vic was banished from the planet where he had wreaked all the havoc. The key difference between that situation and this one, Fisher thought, was that Fisher didn’t have any other planets to go to.
“What is it you want?” Amanda said, giving Three a searing glare. “Why have you done all of this?”
“Ah,” Three said. “This is the part where you expect me to make a speech like the one my former master”—he inclined his head toward Dr. X—“made not long ago. Explaining his painful past, the mistreatment he suffered from others, and how that drove him to seek vengeance on the world.”
Dr. X stiffened, glaring.
“But now you can understand the difference between him and me,” Three continued. “I have no past wrongs, because I have no past. Dr. X did what he did because people hurt his poor, weak feelings. He wanted to prove himself. I, on the other hand, am not driven by passion, or the need for revenge. He will never be as dangerous or powerful as I can be, for the simple reason that I don’t seek to gain power and control because I was driven to it. I seek power and control simply because I can.”
FP and Wally were growling, but Fisher could tell from the way FP’s ears were batting back and forth that he was afraid. He’d never been this close to Three before.
Fisher’s legs felt like stone as Three’s almost hypnotic, machinelike voice filled his head. In a way, it was Fisher’s own outburst of vengeful anger that had brought Two, and then Three, into the world. Fisher remembered the white-hot need for revenge and acceptance that had once run through him. He might have ended up like Dr. X.
“And now,” Three said, “my bots are inside the school, closing in on this very room. They’ll be here in just a few minutes. So, if you’d all like to—”
Amanda lost what little self-control she’d had left. With no warning, she burst forward and charged at Three. Fisher would sooner have stood in front of a logging truck with its brakes cut than try to stop Amanda on a mission.
Three, however, didn’t bat an eye. He dropped into a crouch, and they locked arms like a pair of reindeer clashing antlers. She shot low, trying to get an arm around his front leg and trip him. He deftly shifted his feet out of her reach, wrapped one wrist around her reaching arm, and grabbed the back of her shirt with his other hand. He twisted his hips and threw her off her feet, sending her into the floor with a smack.
Amanda, dazed from the landing, was unable to get back to her feet. Three laughed.
“Stay … away … from … her,” Alex spat out, between gritted teeth. He whipped something out of his bag that looked like a cross between a 1950s sci-fi ray gun, a sophisticated computer system, and a really evil food processor. He took hold of it, pointed its maniacally barbed barrel at Three, and eased his finger over the trigger.
Fisher turned to Alex, fear on his face.
“Wait, Alex! Not yet! Not yet!!”
But Alex didn’t listen. “This is for throwing me to the squiranhas!” he shouted, pulling the trigger. The weapon started to shake, and so did Alex.
“Hold on!” Fisher said, terror rising in its voice. “It’s almost charged! Just a few more seconds!”
“I … I …,” Alex said, his teeth chattering as the shaking grew more severe. “I … eaaaghhhh!” He collapsed, dropping the weapon to the floor, his body convulsing. “I … I’m sorry, Fisher. I … couldn’t handle the … feedback.” He gasped and shuddered as Three let out a dry chuckle.
“What a nice-looking toy,” he said, picking up the weapon. “What does it do?”
“No,” Fisher said as he, Veronica, and Dr. X backed up to the wall. Amanda was still on the floor, clutching her head. The footsteps in the hall had grown deafening.
Three narrowed his eyes. “Careless of you to employ a weapon you aren’t strong enough to handle.” He spotted the weapon’s power-level knob. “Not even at twenty-five percent. Why don’t we try one hundred percent? See just what this creation of yours is capable of.”
He pointed the weapon down at Alex.
“This is what I should’ve done the first time, instead of messing around with silly fish.”
Three pulled the trigger.…
And fell down like a stack of empty tissue boxes in a wind tunnel. His body jerked and spasmed as it hit the floor. Amanda and Alex were up instantly, and Fisher leapt in to join them as Amanda grabbed Three’s arms and Alex held his legs. Fisher knelt on Three’s back and put two of the zip ties in his pocket around his wrists and two more around his ankles.
Veronica stared, dumbfounded.
“What happened?” she said.
“It’s not a gun,” said Fisher. “It’s one of those trick phones that zaps you when you touch it. Alex and I added an on/off trigger and a power knob, replaced the wiring and the battery to make it eight times more powerful, then stuck a bunch of whatever weird-looking things we had lying around the lab onto it. We knew Three wouldn’t be able to resist it.”