by Amy Ignatow
“Project Extreme Awesomeness,” Kameron chimed in.
“Nerdapalooza,” Kurt snickered.
“Terror Force One,” Farshad found himself saying.
“Terror Force Fifteen,” Martina added.
“The Goat Wranglers,” Paul said, looking at Gertie.
“Maah. Feed me. Why are we standing here. Everyone is stupid,” Gertie whined.
“The Sabotage Squad,” Beanie said.
“Okay! Apparently we did have time to think up a name for us. The Sabotage Squad it is,” Jay said, looking at Beanie with approval before turning to Nick. “Nick, old sauce, are you ready?”
Nick took a deep breath and held out his hand to Willis, who took it with a wild look in his eye. A split second later they were gone, and a few seconds after that Nick had returned to hold out his hand to Rebecca. “I left him in the women’s bathroom, so you should probably be next?”
One by one Nick transported the Sabotage Squad except for Abe and the Farm Kids into Auxano’s underground-lab-wing women’s room, ending with Gertie. “Maah,” she said, “I was there and now I’m here. I don’t like it.”
“Shhh!” Jay hissed, shooting a frustrated look at the goat. “We’ll get caught!”
“But I’m hungry,” Gertie pointed out.
Abe grabbed some paper towels and gave them to Gertie to eat, which immediately quieted her down.
“That was close,” Jay breathed. “We’re going to have to be more careful if we’re going to get this done. Okay, Sabotage Squad, into your teams.” The group shuffled around in the crowded bathroom and Farshad found Martina and Nick by the handicapped sink. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. This was really happening. They were really going to do this crazy thing. He looked to his friends and felt a strange surge of comfort. At least they were doing this crazy thing together.
“Are we all ready?” Jay asked the assembled groups.
“Yes!” they whispered back in unison.
“What . . . what are you all doing here?” A woman in a lab coat who had just entered the bathroom gasped. “Is that a goat?!?”
“Mom!” Jay yelped.
“Yes, I am a goat. Give me food,” Gertie bleated.
Beanie was the first to move, quickly stepping to block the door to keep Jay’s mom from leaving the crowded bathroom. Nick could see that Dr. Carpenter knew she was trapped.
“What is going on here?” She turned to her son. “Jacob Hieronymous Carpenter, what are you doing here?”
Nick had only ever heard Dr. Carpenter refer to Jay by his full name one time, and that was when they were seven and Jay had built a pair of wings out of a shredded feather pillow held together with wax from cheese rounds and was about to jump off the Carpenters’ roof. Showing up in the ladies’ room of her secret underground lab with a bunch of kids and a goat was probably worse.
“Now, Mom,” Jay started.
“Nick, is that you?”
“Hi, Dr. Carpenter.” Nick felt his cheeks getting red with embarrassment and wanted to be anywhere other than—
He was back in front of his old house. “No!” he heard himself crying out. “Not here!” He had to get back to help his friends. He really, really didn’t want to but he had to—
“Nick!” Abe yelped before Kaylee and the Farm Kids shushed him from their spot at the edge of the forest.
“Is it time for Operation Chaos already?” Paul asked, and before he could answer Nick found himself back in the women’s bathroom.
“AAAAUUGH!” Dr. Carpenter screamed.
“Nick! You weren’t supposed to let anyone see that! What are we supposed to do with her?” Cookie asked in a panicked voice.
“Can you all do that?!?” Dr. Carpenter asked, her voice quaking.
“Don’t answer her!” Jay belted. “Don’t tell her anything! For all we know, she’s part of this!”
“Oh, she is definitely part of this,” Cookie said, shooting a look to Nick.
“What? What aren’t you telling me?” Jay looked wildly at Nick, who was struggling to calm down and remain in one place.
“I may have forgotten to mention to you that it looks like your mom is in charge of this whole project,” he said quietly.
Jay stared at Nick with his mouth hanging open.
“I’m really, really sorry,” Nick said, staring at his feet and willing them to stay where they were, “there just never seemed to be a good time—”
“Okay, enough,” Jay said, and threw back his shoulders. “When all this is over we are going to work on our communication.” He looked around the room. “Nothing has changed. The plan remains the same. Only, now it looks like we have to lock my mother in the bathroom.”
“Jacob Hieronymous Carpenter!”
“Sorry, Mom. Sabotage Squad, deploy!”
The different teams ran out into the hallway. Beanie was last, and after they’d shut the door on Dr. Carpenter, Farshad pushed his thumb into the doorknob, squishing it into uselessness.
“Sorry, Mom!” Jay said through the door.
“Jay, I—” Nick started again as they were about to part—he with Farshad and Martina and Jay with Willis, Rebecca, Beanie, and Cookie.
“Don’t worry about it, old warthog, we’ll deal with it later. But let’s try to tell each other things in a timely manner from this point forward so there are no nasty surprises, okay?”
The sounds of alarms began to fill the hallway.
“I think I may have accidentally caused Abe and the Farm Kids to prematurely attack Auxano,” Nick said.
Cookie and Team Formula found the lab faster than they’d expected, and Beanie used his battering ram of a body to force open the door. Inside they’d found a small team of four bleary-eyed scientists looking up at them with confused terror. “HELLO, SCIENTISTS,” Jay shout-snarled. “My name is Jay but you may call me LASER EYES because I can shoot lasers out of my eyes and if you don’t want to experience what that’s like I suggest you all get into that supply closet right now.”
The scientists must have seen some strange things over the course of their employment at Auxano because without any objections they all filed into the closet, which Beanie then blocked with a lab table that he’d ripped out of the floor by merely walking into it.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Cookie said, incredulous.
“Sometimes you have to come up with a story so preposterous that it has to be believed,” Jay explained.
“So . . . your mom is going to kill you.”
“Yeah, I am definitely in trouble.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” Cookie said.
“Me too,” Jay said. He looked like he didn’t want to talk about it, and Cookie felt a surge of gratitude for her mostly normal mom.
Outside the room Cookie could hear the alarms continue to go off, and she watched as Willis scurried around the lab, gathering materials with intense focus. It seemed completely bonkers to be leaving all of this up to a kid who seemed . . . completely bonkers, but he appeared to be confident in what he was doing. A lot was riding on him. Cookie watched as he poured precise mixtures of chemicals into vials for the massive centrifuge.
To the centrifuge room—
“They’re coming!” Cookie said, panicked. Willis ignored her and kept mixing, but Beanie ran to the door and blocked it with his body right before the Auxano security team began trying to beat it down. But Beanie was immobile. Rebecca looked at his grim face and started to cry.
“How much longer?!?” Cookie asked as the thumping grew louder. It was as if instead of opening the door they were trying to obliterate it, and Cookie had no idea how much Beanie could take.
Cover your ears. That was Martina.
“Cover your ears!!! Do it now!” Cookie shouted, and stuffed her fingers into her ears right before the screaming began, first from the bunnies and then from the security forces outside the door. The pounding stopped.
Let me in, let me in!
“Let Martina in!”
Cookie screamed to Beanie, who had his hands over his ears. She gestured furiously to the door with her foot, and after a moment of bewilderment Beanie cautiously moved away. Martina scrambled in with an armful of noise-canceling headphones and behind her Cookie could see Auxano security guards in fetal positions on the floor and holding their ears as fluffy screaming bunnies went hopping up the hallway.
Martina passed out the headphones and Cookie felt a surge of relief as she put them on. Rebecca put a pair on Willis as he started pouring his mixture into the spray bottles they had brought. “WE SHOULD SPRAY THOSE BUNNIES!” Cookie screamed before realizing that of course no one could hear her. She ran to the whiteboard and scribbled, Let’s spray the bunnies!
Willis was working with complete intensity as if he’d spent his entire life working in that lab, and it occurred to Cookie that once he was cured all that scientific genius would be just . . . gone. He’d be an Amish kid again, educated in a one-room schoolhouse and expected to run a farm or maybe make furniture or saddles or something, and that would be it. If the antidote worked, then all his potential for incredible, maybe helpful discoveries would be snuffed out in an instant.
(But then again he would no longer be writing chemical equations on the walls.)
There were two spray bottles full of the antidote. Jay grabbed one and went charging out into the hall. Stay here! he mouthed to Cookie before shutting the door behind him, and she and the others crowded around the little window in the door to watch as he chased the sonic bunnies down the hallway.
They seemed to have lost Martina, but Farshad was strangely unworried. Maybe it was because she always seemed to land on her feet, or maybe because they were surrounded by blaring alarms and flashing lights, and in all honesty he was more worried about not running into Auxano security forces while trying to break out a bunch of feral middle schoolers and a dude who could make fires so that they could hopefully be sprayed with an untested antidote. Martina was probably fine.
Nick was in the hall in front of him, leaning against each door they passed, transporting himself into it, and then out again. “Another empty lab!” he called to Farshad, who was tall enough to peer through the small window in each door.
“This one’s just an empty room,” he told Nick, who rushed back to him before disappearing. Farshad looked into the window and saw him on the other side. Nick let out a sudden scream and jerked around.
“NICK!” Farshad shouted, and a moment later Nick was next to him again in the hallway.
“Look who I found!” Nick said excitedly.
“Hi, Farshad,” a voice said, and Farshad turned around wildly, trying to see who it was until he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be frightened,” the familiar voice said, “it’s Ed. I’d shake your hand, but I’d rather not risk getting mine broken.”
“Are you okay?” Nick asked. “Do you know where the others are?”
“Who, the substitute teacher?” Ed asked.
“Yes, and there are others.”
“How many others?”
Over the sounds of the alarms Farshad heard a sort of dull roar. He felt a chill as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He’d heard that before. He pointed down the hallway. “Those others!”
They didn’t have to look for the Company Kids; the Company Kids had found them.
“RUN!” Farshad yelled. Nick disappeared.
“Did you see that?!?” Ed screamed.
“GAAAARRRR!” the crowd of Company Kids screamed. They looked as though they had been sedated, but whatever they’d been given wasn’t exactly working because they were clearly able to lurch toward them. Leading the charge were the Company Kids who had escaped from the overturned van—they, too, had come to save their friends. It would have been kind of sweet if Farshad wasn’t terrified of them ripping him limb from limb.
“FORGET ABOUT NICK,” Farshad screamed, “RUN!”
That’s when they heard the first explosion.
“Jay!!!” Cookie found herself screaming. She’d felt at least four explosions since he’d run out of the lab with the spray bottles. She turned to Martina. “IS JAY OKAY?”
Martina looked at her, wide-eyed. Cookie carefully took off her noise-canceling headphones. There were no bunny screams. “Did you feel that?”
Martina took off her headphones, too, and this time they heard the explosion.
“ARE THE AUXANO PEOPLE THROWING BOMBS?” Cookie screamed, aghast.
Beanie rushed to the door and peeked out the window. Cookie could see strange blue smoke filling the hallway outside. “I can’t see anyone,” he said.
“What about Jay?” Cookie asked, panicked. She looked to Martina and was dismayed to see that she, too, looked frightened. “What do you see?”
“Nothing!”
“Wait, did it work? Are your powers gone?” Cookie asked, her voice trembling. Martina’s eyes quickly shifted from brown to gray to a startling green. “No, no, you’re still normal. Or . . . normal for you.”
“Okay, done!” Willis said, putting the caps on the remaining spray bottles.
“What do you mean, done?” Rebecca asked.
“The formula. It is done now.”
Cookie turned to stare at him. “Was it not done before?”
“No.”
“THEN WHAT DID JAY JUST USE TO SPRAY THOSE BUNNIES?”
Willis looked at her blankly.
“The Company Kids are out! They’ve escaped!” Nick suddenly appeared next to Rebecca, who let out a little shriek.
“What do you mean, they’ve escaped?” Cookie asked.
“I thought we wanted to get them out so we could spray them,” Martina added.
“We can’t spray anyone!” Cookie yelped. “I think the spray is making people explode!”
“I would rather not explode,” Beanie chimed in.
“Wait, what? The spray doesn’t work?” Nick asked.
“It will work,” Willis said.
“I’M PRETTY SURE ABOUT FIVE BUNNIES JUST EXPLODED FROM THAT SPRAY!” Cookie shrieked. “AND JAY WAS WITH THEM AND WE CAN’T FIND HIM.”
Nick’s eyes widened in fear. “What? What’s happening? Where’s Jay?”
“He went out—No!” Cookie cried, launching herself at Nick. “You can’t go out there, the hallway is full of some sort of chemical mixture that makes screaming bunnies explode!” She grabbed hold of his arm to stop him, and suddenly they were back in the women’s bathroom.
“Dear god!” Dr. Carpenter bleated. “Nick! You . . . Nick!”
The alarms were still blaring, but Cookie could hear the sounds of a crowd of . . . people? Dogs? outside making their way through the halls. Dr. Carpenter rushed to the door. “HELP!” she screamed, banging on it with both fists. “I’m in here, help me!”
“No no no no no no no!” Nick said, looking at Cookie. “It’s the Company Kids!”
“HELP! SOMEBODY LET ME OUT OF HERE!”
There was a massive bang on the door—someone on the other side had heard Dr. Carpenter and was trying to get in. Cookie watched in horror as the heavy metal door began to buckle from the force of the banging.
“Let . . . me out of here . . .” Dr. Carpenter whimpered.
Cookie grabbed Nick with one hand and Dr. Carpenter with the other. “Get us out of here!”
And then they were in a darkened house. It smelled slightly of smoke.
“What . . . where . . .” Dr. Carpenter looked around wildly. “Nicholas, are we in your house?”
They had landed in his kitchen. “I’m sorry, I guess I just felt like we needed to get somewhere safe . . .” Nick said, looking around.
“Did you do this?” Dr. Carpenter looked aghast. “How . . . No, we need to get you back to the lab right now . . .”
“Why, so you can do experiments on us, I mean, him?” Cookie asked, suddenly angry.
“No, no, of course not, we just want to help him,” Dr. Carpenter quickly said.
“What, like you helped Mr. Friend?” C
ookie took a step toward Dr. Carpenter, who cowered a little. “Like you helped those kids to get better test scores?”
“We didn’t mean . . .”
“You didn’t mean to WHAT? Look at Nick’s house! YOU. DID. THIS.”
“Cookie,” Nick said, “Mr. Friend did this . . .”
“Sure, but would he have had the power to start random fires had this crazy lady not decided that it would be a swell idea to play with people’s brain chemistry so that some kids could get smarter?” Cookie asked.
“We never intended . . .”
“THEN WHY DID YOU GIVE THE COMPANY KIDS THE FORMULA?” Cookie found herself screaming. “You knew what it did to Mr. Friend but you gave it to them anyway. You gave this stupid formula to kids who already had smart parents and all the opportunities in the world because somehow that wasn’t enough so you had to make them into total freakshows and FOR WHAT? So they could do well on tests?”
“Well . . .” Dr. Carpenter started. “Getting into a top college is very difficult . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“We’ve got to get back to Auxano and find Jay,” Nick said.
“Oh, that’s right, your son might be hurt from an exploding rabbit,” Cookie snarled, and grabbed Nick’s hand, and they were back in the Auxano women’s bathroom.
It looked as though the door to the bathroom had been ripped entirely off its hinges, and signs of the Company Kids’ destruction was everywhere. The hallway was filled with smoke. In the distance Cookie could hear barking, which she really didn’t want to think about.
“JAY!” Nick yelled, trying to see through the smoke. Cookie opened her mind to search for the sound of Jay’s thoughts, but all she could hear was the dull, dumb pandemonium of Company Kids’ thoughts.
“RUUUNNNN!!!!” a voice shrieked, and Cookie watched in astonishment as Jay and Farshad went flying by them. She looked at Nick and they raced after their friends.
“Jay, you’re alive!” she yelped with joy.
“STOP!” Nick gasped, and held out his arms. Cookie, Jay, and Farshad ran back to him and he wrapped them all in a big bear hug.
“This is nice!” Jay said. “But we should probably go.”