Tested

by Landry Q. Walker

  “You fool!” Rowan cackled cartoonishly. “You may have cheated your way through the pod, but I have a hundred other inventions to destroy you with! Like these missiles!”

  The robot fired a small barrage of missiles from its shoulders, which tore past Tony and blew a hole in the wall. Rather than wait to see what the robot unleashed next, Tony opted to jump through the hole and get out of the path of destruction. Tony mentally checked where he could be. The hallway that he had been in led to a series of meeting rooms and staff facilities. The hole in the wall should lead directly to a briefing . . .

  “Nope,” Tony said. “This is totally not right.”

  It was, in fact, very wrong. The ceiling of the briefing room had apparently been removed and replaced with a series of shifting platforms, each moving in and out of the wall. It was like—

  “It’s like a video game,” Tony whispered.

  Another monitor flickered on. David Rowan’s angry face appeared. “That’s right! It is a game. A game you can’t cheat at. A game you can’t win. And when you fail, I’ll prove that I am the best engineer to ever grace these halls!”

  “These halls?” Tony yelled. “How did you change the entire building? And where is everyone?”

  “I created a distraction, emptying the building so that only we remained,” Rowan bragged. “And I built this entire complex. I designed every wall, every door, every window. And within it, I secretly created the perfect test. The impossible test! The test that will lead to your defeat!”

  CHAPTER 7

  Echo blinked as she regained consciousness. For a moment, she had forgotten where she was, and had almost expected to wake up and find herself back in that stupid pod.

  But instead, Tobias was looming over her. “You okay?” he asked. “You started to spin out.”

  Echo sat up abruptly, pushing him aside. “My car! Where’s my—” It was sitting five feet away, completely intact. Echo’s brow furrowed. “How . . . I was spinning out—”

  Tobias stood, reaching out a hand to help Echo up. “You pulled out of the spiral just in time. I don’t know how you did it, but I’ve never seen anyone drive like that.”

  Echo shook off her disorientation. “Seriously? I couldn’t have managed that during the test?”

  Tobias blinked. “Sorry, what?”

  “Nothing,” Echo replied, feeling mildly embarrassed. “Thanks, I guess . . . You pulled me out of the car?”

  “You looked like you needed some air,” he answered. “You okay now?”

  “Yeah, I think so. My name’s Echo, by the way,” she said, reaching out her hand.

  “Tobias Grube,” he answered as he shook her hand. “You new in town?”

  “Not really.” Echo looked around. “Where exactly am I? Where is the city?”

  Tobias laughed. “You’re basically between nowhere and nothing. It’s a good stretch to race on, though. Maybe you want a rematch?”

  Echo shrugged. “Maybe.” But then a slash of lightning in the air distracted her.

  In the distance, illuminated for only a second, was an old mansion on a hill.

  “What is that place?” she asked.

  “Just a dusty old art gallery. Nothing great,” Tobias said dismissively.

  “An art gallery in the middle of nowhere in a spooky mansion?” Echo said, with one thin eyebrow raised. “And I’m not supposed to go look? I don’t think so.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Tony tried to grab one of the old-school emergency phones. Unfortunately, as soon as he grabbed a receiver, David Rowan’s robot fired out a pencil-thin laser that severed the physical line.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Rowan’s voice sang through the speakers. “This game won’t be so easily cheated!”

  Tony stepped back, taking in the room. The platforms shifted at a furious speed, but they did so in a rhythm.

  “Hesitating, Tony?” Rowan mocked. “I can see why. A simple race car driver like you could never possibly manage to defeat my doomsday traps!”

  That was the last bit of motivation Tony needed to jump into action, running toward the wall at a breakneck pace. At the last moment before collision, he leaped up and kicked his feet against the opposing wall to his right. He bounced across the narrow hallway, back and forth, letting his momentum propel him upward, high enough to grab the edge of the bottom platform.

  That’s when Tony heard a whooshing sound and saw a panel in the wall open—and from that panel, boiling water began pouring out, quickly filling the hallway below!

  “You can run, Tony Toretto,” Rowan said, his voice menacing and low. “But you can’t hide.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “This is some amazing art,” Echo said as she wandered through the gallery with Tobias. “Check this one out. It’s called Saira. It’s beautiful! I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this gallery. You’d think—” Echo’s train of thought was interrupted by the sound of an alarm.

  And then suddenly the lights went out.

  Echo whirled in the direction of a sound. Something swift swooshed past her with a rush of air. She couldn’t see, but the sound was unmistakable—a drone!

  Echo slapped on the emergency light built into her spy watch and shined it in a fast three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweep.

  “Tobias?” she called out, but the stranger was gone. The drone, however, was as clear as day: a gleaming black piece of hardware that would have made Frostee jealous. The machine had four arms built into it, remote robotics of some kind. More important, it had the Saira painting in its polished claws.

  “No way,” Echo muttered to herself. “A high-tech art robbery?”

  She sprang into action, but the drone sailed through the air faster than she could run. Just as she started to sprint, a dozen armed guards surrounded her, stepping between Echo and the escaping drone. A split second later, the remote-control robot rocketed right out a window to freedom, with the painting in tow.

  “Hands up!” the guards yelled as they pointed their stun weapons at her. Echo had no choice. In the distance, she could see the robot flying away through the night sky. And then she noticed something weirder . . . The stolen painting was still hanging on the wall!

  CHAPTER 10

  Tony realized the ceiling was much higher than he’d thought. The moving platforms were the only way up. Down was no longer an option, with the rising level of boiling water filling in.

  He glanced down and almost stumbled but steadied himself and jumped once more, grabbing the platform above with an outstretched hand.

  “You seriously think that creating a real-life video game is gonna stop me?” the teenager said, laughing. “I rule at games! I play them, like, way too much! Layla even called my skills ‘dangerous for my development’! That’s how awesome I am.”

  The voice of David Rowan roared from a nearby speaker built into the wall. “That’s not a good thing!”

  Then circular saw blades spun out of the wall!

  “Too slow!” Tony laughed as he dodged them. But one blade came a little too close, and Tony began to slip.

  “Getting tired?” Rowan taunted. “My machines never will!”

  Tony grabbed one of the blades that had lodged in the wall and ripped it free. With a quick spin of his wrist, he flung the serrated metal disk toward a sealed door.

  The heavy blade tore through the door and created an exit from the never-ending climb that Tony was struggling with.

  Tony dove through the hole, narrowly avoiding another missile attack. He was in a new room now, though it looked pretty much identical to the old one. Tony couldn’t help wondering just how big this building was.

  And then, with a slight whooshing sound, another panel opened and a bunch of snakes fell out. A whole bunch. Like hundreds and hundreds of hissing, writhing, sinister-looking snakes.

  “Aaaah!” yelled Tony.

 
CHAPTER 11

  It had taken only a quick call to Ms. Nowhere to clear things up with the security team, though it seemed to Echo as if it had been an eternity. But at least during that eternity, Echo had gotten a sense of who was who and what exactly was going on.

  “This is the third painting stolen in the last three weeks!” cried the dark-haired Susan Damon, the curator of the museum. “And every time it’s the same! The drone cuts the power, flies in, and flies back out with the art!”

  “And they always leave a fake painting in place of the original, too. Plastic replicas!” lamented Ricky Lovas, an elderly man with white hair and a goatee.

  “Why leave a fake at all?” Echo replied.

  Susan shook her head. “It slows us down usually, trying to find which wing of the museum was robbed. The security grid shows us everything is in place.”

  “Except this time, there was a witness,” Ricky said. “And she saw the drone and the criminal. Maybe we can actually catch this guy now!”

  “I can trace the drone with my spy watch,” Echo suggested. “They’re pinging an IP address, and the signal seems to be coming from the south, down the coast.”

  Ricky frowned. “But the boy—”

  Echo shrugged. “If I find the drone, it might lead to Tobias and the paintings. I’ll be back soon.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Interesting,” Ms. Nowhere said as she watched the semiconscious, hypnotized forms of Echo and Tony through a monitor. The pair were still whizzing around in circles in the pod, completely unaware that everything they were experiencing was part of a false reality generated by the spinning and the flashing lights.

  “The story that each subject is experiencing is created out of their own subconscious,” Dr. Rowan explained. “Mr. Toretto doesn’t seem to like me very much,” he added.

  “You were introduced as an authority figure.” Nowhere nodded. “His rebellious streak is strong. Echo, on the other hand—”

  “Her imagination has created quite an elaborate scenario,” Rowan noted as he analyzed the data.

  “She’s daydreaming about art thieves and mystery stories. Completely on point for her.” Nowhere sighed. “Hopefully, both of them can work through their personal demons.” She twisted a dial, and the centrifuge spun faster. “I’d hate to see either of them fail,” she said.

  CHAPTER 13

  “You’re going to fail!” yelled a twenty-foot-long snake with Rowan’s face on it. It wasn’t a real snake, of course, but some kind of crazy robot snake that the mad scientist had cooked up. There were also dozens of smaller robot snakes, all trying to bite Tony at every turn.

  Tony ran down the long hallway, rounding the corner as fast as he could. Behind him the giant snake slithered along the carpet, propelling its metal form forward.

  Without missing a step, Tony pulled his spy watch off, tapping furiously at the buttons on the device.

  “You trying to make a call, cheater? Hoping your friends can bail you out? The entire building is cell-signal shielded. You’ll have to figure this one out for yourself.”

  Tony whirled. The robot was almost on him. “Okay, Dr. Snake-bot. Well, how about this, then?” With a quick flip of the wrist, he threw the watch at the snake. It hit the metal forehead of the monster.

  Rowan’s voice came through speakers built into the robot. “What exactly did you hope to—”

  Suddenly the spy watch overloaded, sending out a pulse signal. It had been a long shot, but Tony remembered a briefing lesson when they had been taught not to reset the spy watch while they were sitting on a metal surface.

  The robot snake emitted a bunch of smoke. All the tiny snakes suddenly died, too.

  Tony picked up his watch. It was rebooting, but still functional, luckily. With a quick look, he checked out the hallway he was in. It didn’t have the infinitely high ceiling the other did. So . . . where exactly was he supposed to go now?

  Then a hatch in the ceiling opened up and a spiral staircase dropped down.

  “You built stairs in your super-doomsday tower?” Tony laughed as he launched himself up the twisting staircase. “You’re not even trying anymore!”

  Rowan’s voice rang out. “You think it will be so easy?” he roared.

  Suddenly the stairs flattened into smooth slopes. Tony started to slide back down. Now he was in immediate danger of plummeting all the way to the bottom, where a pit of razor-sharp spikes awaited.

  CHAPTER 14

  Echo traced the drone signal down the coast, all the way to a rickety, waterlogged pier.

  She couldn’t help shuddering. The location was remote, and the waters off the docks were completely still. The moon was low and gave off little light, but Echo could see a small device duct-taped to one of the rotting timbers.

  It was a signal repeater. The signal Echo was following—this was a false trail and probably a trap! Suddenly, Echo’s thoughts were interrupted by a very familiar hum.

  “Tobias?” she asked as she turned. Though she already suspected what she would see.

  Sure enough, three drones swarmed her. They were just like the one she had seen in the art gallery, but instead of hands at the end of their arm attachments, they had—

  “Blasters?” Echo said, surprised.

  The drones opened fire. It was a trap! Echo jumped to the left, barely avoiding the deadly assault. The wooden structure of the pier swayed under her feet. One of the stabilizing beams must have been shattered by the blasts.

  Seeing an opportunity, Echo dove through a freshly created hole in the pier, knowing that the drones would try to follow. Instantly, three of them zoomed through the hole after her. But Echo hadn’t allowed herself to hit the water. Instead, she had caught the beam with one hand and twisted her body so that she was nestled safely on a damp beam running horizontally under the pier. It was a gamble. She wasn’t really hidden. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide. But she wasn’t where the drones would expect her to be. All she could do was hope that the machines’ momentum would take care of the problem for her.

  Mostly, it worked. Two of the drones crashed into the calm ocean, but the third had course corrected. That’s when Echo leaped out from the pier understructure and onto the top of the last drone. The hovering machine scanned the water below and, not finding Echo, concluded that its job was done. Its sensors couldn’t register the girl riding on top of it, so it prepared to return itself to its base.

  Soon, Echo would find the lair of whoever was stealing the paintings. Tobias, or someone else . . .

  CHAPTER 15

  Tony tumbled down the spiral staircase toward the spikes. He was dizzy almost immediately. But this wasn’t the first time Tony had almost fallen to his doom, and he quickly slapped at his spy watch, unleashing the grappling hook built within.

  The grapple fired from the end of the muzzle, and the hook launched up into the distance. The rope went taut. It had latched on to something! Tony pushed a button on the tiny handle, and the thin rope began to retract, pulling him up, out of immediate danger, but toward Dr. Rowan.

  Between him and Dr. Rowan, though, was a glass ceiling.

  As Tony twisted his wrist in just the right way, his spy watch responded by reeling in the grappling hook and speeding Tony up toward the thin glass ceiling.

  Too fast, Tony thought. Gotta think fast!

  He quickly reached into his pocket and grabbed the first thing he found—a spare spark plug with a hard ceramic and metal housing. Just what he needed! A moment before his body would crash through the glass, he flung the spark plug above him, shattering the ceiling a split second before it would have sliced him to ribbons. Then he sailed through the gap and rolled to his feet.

  Rowan was there with a series of computers stretched out in front of him. In his hand was a remote control.

  “You . . . you can’t,” Rowan started to say.

 
Tony wasted no time and knocked the remote out of the villain’s grasp. It plummeted through the hole in the glass floor to the depths of the staircase below.

  Tony whirled, ready for the final battle.

  CHAPTER 16

  Echo rode the drone all the way back to the last place it should have flown to—the art gallery.

  More specifically, the warehouse at the back of the gallery. Once she docked into the drone’s recharging station, Echo used the light on her spy watch to investigate the dusty, dark building.

  There was a lot of odd stuff around—piles of newspapers, a rack of old clothes—but most notably a large printer with a heavy spool of some kind of thin plastic attached to it, and a pile of paintings that looked way too nice to be stored loosely inside a dusty warehouse.

  Then Echo heard a familiar voice.

  “Tobias?” she called out. Echo looked down and discovered a clear seam in the wooden floor. Pulling on a small hole in the wood, she revealed a hidden staircase.

  At the bottom of the makeshift hideaway was the boy she had been seeking. But one look at the teenager, and it was clear Tobias was not the thief.

  Echo quickly pulled the gag from Tobias’s mouth and untied his wrists. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Tobias said as he rubbed his arms. “Everything went dark and I woke up here, wherever this is.”

  Before Echo could reply, the drone came back to life. It was clear that it now knew where Echo was, and it was intent on ending her, and Tobias.

  “Look out!” Echo yelled, shoving the still-disoriented boy out of the line of fire.

  Tapping some buttons on her spy watch, Echo activated a flare that fired across the room. The drone was distracted by the light and spun toward it. Echo didn’t hesitate. She jumped at the drone recharging station. It was a long shot, but the charging station was probably the “brain” of the drone. If it wasn’t encrypted, her spy watch could override the remote systems!