Rise of the Robot Army

by Robert Venditti

  Josie. If there was one person Miles wanted to let in on his secret, it was Josie. She was the most perfect girl to ever set foot—

  “Miles? Are you listening?” Mr. Taylor asked.

  “Hm?”

  “I said, when seventh grade ended, you and I made a deal. I’d lay off and let you have the summer to practice with the cape. Get more comfortable with the heavy workload of looking after the city, so you could be ready when something really bad happens. Tell you the truth, I couldn’t be prouder of how you’ve done. But you’re in eighth grade now. Your last year before high school. I want you focusing on your schoolwork first and foremost. Let the police and fire department handle what they can. Your job is to handle what they can’t. And only what they can’t.

  “You do that, and when the big things come up, I’ll cover for you missing school. Which, unless I’m mistaken, makes me the only dad in America who’ll help his thirteen-year-old cut class. Remember that come Father’s Day.”

  “I know it’s not easy, Dad. Dealing with me being Gilded. So thanks.”

  Miles meant it. When it came to fatherhood, this was seriously uncharted territory. It wasn’t like Mr. Taylor could go to the library and check out The Single Parent’s Guide to Raising a Superhero.

  Mr. Taylor set down his fork. “I understand you have important boots to fill—Lord, isn’t that an understatement—but I want your word it won’t get in the way of school any more than it has to.” Mr. Taylor held forward his hand. “Let’s shake on it.”

  In the Taylor household, shaking hands sealed an agreement tighter than a presidential signature.

  Miles clasped Mr. Taylor’s hand. “I promise, Dad.” He felt a pang of loss. A few months ago the summer had seemed to stretch out in front of him like an endless highway. Now all that road was in his rearview. How had it gone by so fast?

  Mr. Taylor went back to his breakfast. “Good man. After eighth grade comes high school. After that, college. Not a bit of that is negotiable. Because, unless there’s something you’re not telling me, being Gilded isn’t ever going to put food on your table.”

  Another truth. For all the cape’s abilities, making money wasn’t one of them. Using it for personal profit was another no-no. All the comic books, toys, and other merchandise based on Gilded were done without consent. Henry had explained the legalese of it to Miles. Something to do with Gilded being a public figure like the president, so his likeness wasn’t protected. It sounded fishy, but what was Miles going to do about it, file a lawsuit?

  “But what if—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. My tax bill hasn’t gone down, so I’m guessing that means there’s still cops and firefighters in this town. Let them do what they get paid to. You think dispatch sends me out every time someone needs to replace a lightbulb?”

  “No.”

  “Darn right, no. I handle the big jobs. Everyone else can pitch in on the rest. That’s what I expect of you.”

  “All right,” Miles said glumly. “I will.”

  “I expect so. Don’t forget you gave me your word on this. A man doesn’t have his word—”

  “—he doesn’t have jack.” A tried-and-true Hollis Taylor proverb. Right up there with “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it” and “If you don’t like Johnny Cash music, I don’t want to know you.”

  Miles pushed his half-eaten breakfast around on his plate. All this talk of not being Gilded had ruined his appetite. He stood from the table. “Speaking of school, I’d better get going. The bus will be here soon.”

  “You sure?” Mr. Taylor looked surprised. “No telling when we’ll eat like this again.”

  “Yeah. I’m not hungry.”

  “You go on, then. Have a good day. As for me”—Mr. Taylor reached for Miles’s plate—“I vow to not let this good bacon go to waste.”

  Miles picked up his backpack. The backpack that went everywhere he did. The backpack that held far more than books and notebook paper. He settled it onto his shoulders, feeling the soft hum of its contents against his body.

  All his worries vanished. No matter what else happened, he was Gilded. And as long as that was true, nothing could ever go wrong.

  CHAPTER

  2

  AS MILES STEPPED OFF THE bus, he thought about his summer adventures. Was Mr. Taylor honestly all that surprised Miles had spent the months tackling every mess in Atlanta, no matter how small?

  The plain, simple truth? Being Gilded was fun.

  No, county fairs were fun. Getting pulled in an inner tube behind a pontoon boat on Lake Lanier was fun.

  Being Gilded was spectacular. Way better than being just another thirteen-year-old filing into his first day of school.

  What a difference a year made.

  When Miles had arrived at Chapman Middle for his first day of seventh grade, he’d never felt more abandoned and out of place. He was the new kid. He didn’t have any friends, and no one was lining up to change that. His life would’ve continued that way—maybe forever—if not for the cape. Now here he was one year later. Whether the rest of the kids realized it or not, Miles Taylor was their hero.

  “Miles! Wait up!”

  Miles turned and saw Henry trotting up to him. He was fumbling through his shoulder bag, which was already overstuffed, despite that he hadn’t been to his first class of the year yet and shouldn’t have had any papers or books to tote around. That was Henry. As neat and organized as Miles was, Henry was the polar opposite. His bedroom looked like a bomb site after a hurricane had blown through. It was a wonder he and Miles were able to function as a team at all.

  Still, Miles couldn’t help but smile. After they’d spent the summer together, the two of them working to keep Atlanta safe, Miles was happy to see him on school grounds. It reminded him that even though summer was over, the good times didn’t have to be.

  “Hey, Henry,” Miles said. A scrap of paper tumbled out of Henry’s bag and floated to the ground. “You dropped something.”

  Henry continued rooting around in his bag, moving aside the thicket of papers, comic books, charging cords, and other odds and ends. “I know I didn’t leave my phone at home. . . .” Then he stopped and grinned, as though he’d told a joke that only he’d heard. “Oh, right.” He moved aside his bag to reveal a small pouch hanging on his hip, his smartphone nestled inside. “Check it out. I bought a phone holster. Instant access whenever I need it. No more digging in my bag. Cool, right?”

  Henry Matte, the only human being under the age of sixty who’d ever used “phone holster” and “cool” in the same sentence.

  “Good thinking,” Miles said, nodding. He conjured an image of Henry being as quick on the draw as a Wild West sheriff, except armed with information instead of bullets. Miles reached into his pocket and pulled out his own smartphone. “Got mine right here.”

  Miles checked the screen.

  No missed calls. No messages.

  Miles’s phone was his twenty-four-hours-per-day, seven-days-per-week connection to Henry and, by extension, anything and everything the city might need a superhero for (which, in a city as large as Atlanta, turned out to be quite a few things). Using his phone, Henry kept tabs on the various local news outlets and social media sites that were always first to report when and where a crisis was taking place. If something occurred that needed Gilded’s attention, Henry sent an alert to Miles, and away Miles went.

  There was a time not long ago when Miles had to keep his phone a secret from his dad. But one of the perks of revealing his superhero identity to Mr. Taylor was that his dad had backed off his stance against his son carrying a phone. Figuring Miles was probably the only middle schooler in creation with a life important enough to actually warrant a dedicated phone line, Mr. Taylor had squeezed the cost of the monthly bill out of the already tight household budget. Now Miles had a smartphone with a data plan, a vast improvement over the bare-bones flip-model phone Henry had surreptitiously financed in the early days when Mr. Taylo
r was still in the dark.

  “What about the . . . you know.” Henry glanced around warily, making sure no one was in earshot. There was no such thing as “too careful” when talking about the cape.

  Miles reached back and patted the bottom of his backpack. “Packed and ready to go. Just say when.”

  “We’re a well-oiled machine!” Henry crowed.

  Henry’s excitement level was high, even for him. He lived for school—he always said learning was his favorite pastime. Though he had other things on his mind, Miles agreed this was going to be a year to remember. It didn’t have to be just about tests and homework and smelly buses. Not for Miles Taylor. Not for Gilded.

  “Let’s do this!” Miles said, grinning. He and Henry bumped fists like the teammates they were. “This year belongs to us!”

  Miles slid his phone back into his pocket . . . but not before glancing at the screen again.

  No missed calls. No messages.

  Not entirely unusual. Mornings were always the slowest times for emergencies, particularly crimes in progress. Maybe crooks liked to sleep in, same as everyone else. Besides, Henry was standing right in front of him. If any crises were happening, he’d just tell him.

  Miles glided past the kids milling about in the hall. Just by looking, he could tell the difference between the returning students bummed about another year at Chapman and the new students nervous and trying to orient themselves in such uninviting surroundings. Once he’d been the latter. When he’d woken this morning, he’d felt certain he was going to be the former. Being here now, however, he realized he was neither. He was confident and comfortable. A fighter pilot owning the sky with Henry as his wingman.

  As if to prove the point, Miles spied Josie Campobasso walking toward him.

  Josie. She was the sort of girl you knew had walked into a room not because you saw her, but because you saw the reactions of everyone around you. A straight-A student and a drop-dead knockout, she somehow remained kind enough not to lord her brains or beauty over the less gifted. (Which was everyone.) Josie was perfect. She was unattainable. And right now she was voluntarily approaching Miles to talk to him.

  Wonders never ceased.

  “Do you come here often?” Miles said with a smirk.

  “Very funny.” Josie fell in alongside Miles, matching him stride for stride. “Here we go again, right? Bye-bye summer and being able to hang out whenever we want.”

  Yes, you read that correctly. Much to the annoyance of Josie’s friends and the confusion of everyone else (including, if he was being honest, Miles himself), Miles had spent time with Josie over the summer. The most popular girl in school and the boy whom everyone would vote Most Likely Not to Be Voted for Anything had become an item. Miles wouldn’t go so far as to label himself her boyfriend, but he was definitely something.

  Josie was Henry’s down-the-street neighbor in the Estates at Oak Glen, the fanciest subdivision in the county. Since Miles was often at Henry’s on Gilded business during the summer, he’d capitalized on the opportunity to get closer to her. The best Miles could understand it, she’d been drawn to him because he was the new kid. He was different. Miles would’ve preferred to get her attention because he was handsome or charismatic or even bad-boy mysterious, but different was better than nothing. When a girl like Josie is interested in you, it’s best not to get too hung up on the whys.

  Josie smiled at Miles with her warm hazel eyes. “We have first-period social studies together. Want to see if we can get desks next to each other?”

  “Sorry, Josie,” Henry answered, his eyes close to his phone. “I have a different homeroom. But maybe Miles has social studies with you.”

  Miles stifled a laugh. Henry was good at a lot of things, but multitasking wasn’t one of them. When he was wrapped up in his phone, he could walk off a bridge and not know it until he hit the water. “Desks next to each other sounds great.”

  Josie looped her arms through Miles’s. “I’ll show you the way.”

  His best friend to his left, the best girl to his right, and the power of a superhero stashed inside his backpack. There was nothing in all creation that could ruin such a perfect moment.

  “Hey, Camp-o-bass-o!” a voiced boomed.

  Correction: nothing, except the Jammer.

  Miles stopped, turned, and looked up into the chest, and then looked up some more into the shoulders, before looking all the way up at the head of the tall, broad person towering over him.

  Impossibly—inexplicably—Craig “the Jammer” Logg had managed to increase in size during the summer. Craig was considered by his parents, Coach Lineman, and anyone who knew anything about local football as the most lethal linebacker to ever step cleat on the Chapman Raiders field. Miles just considered him the enemy.

  Standing at his side was a smaller member of the Raiders. Miles didn’t know the kid’s name, and the only word Miles had ever heard him speak was “dude.” The kid seemed to orbit around Craig like a moon caught in Craig’s gravitational pull.

  Craig nudged Josie like the two of them were in a huddle. “Hiya, Camp-o-bass-o,” he said with a wink. He always drew out Josie’s name when he said it. Probably, he thought it was charming. It wasn’t. “You putting in community service hours spending time with these losers?”

  “Dude,” Dude the Teammate said to Josie, nodding. Dude may have had only one word in his vocabulary, but he was able to apply it to nearly every social interaction. Here he’d made it sound like a polite greeting. If you overlooked the fact that he’d just referred to Josie as “dude.”

  “Chick,” Josie said, nodding right back. She wasn’t one to overlook things.

  “Chick!” Craig elbowed Dude the Teammate in the ribs and guffawed loudly. “She schooled you!”

  Dude the Teammate bowed his head, embarrassed. “Dude . . .” He sighed. Miles almost felt bad for him. All the time he must spend with Craig on and off the field and not even he was safe from the Jammer’s taunting.

  Henry chafed. “Speaking of losers, Craig, I saw your brain in the lost and found. You should pick it up, in case you need it.”

  Craig stiffened, eyeing Henry like unfinished business—a loose fumble that needed to be pounced on. “Watch it, Matte. Or—”

  “Or what?” Henry pressed. “You’re going to cough on me, so I can catch some of your stupid?” Henry was off-limits to Craig, and Craig knew it. It was on account of Henry being an aide for Assistant Principal Harangue. One word to Mr. Harangue that Craig had laid a hand on Henry, and Mr. Harangue would make sure Craig missed the next practice or—heaven forbid—a whole game. The only thing in the world that terrified the Jammer was the possibility of him losing his right to school-sanctioned violence on the football field.

  Craig balled his hands into fists the size of footballs. “You . . . you . . . ,” he spluttered.

  “Yeah?” Henry answered, arms crossed. If he’d had a stepladder, he would’ve climbed it and stared right into Craig’s face.

  “RAAAAGH!” Craig exploded. He planted his paw in Miles’s chest and sent him sailing backward.

  KRANG!

  Miles crashed into the wall of lockers behind him. The sharp sound of his body connecting with metal reverberated in the hallway. Miles dropped to the floor, a pain shooting up his side.

  “Dude!” Dude the Teammate laughed, pointing at Miles splayed on the terrazzo.

  Miles blinked away stars and saw the Jammer looming over him.

  “Be careful who you run with, Taylor. Your friends are liable to get you hurt.”

  Josie stepped in front of Craig, pushing him away. “Get out of here, Craig.”

  “Hey now.” Craig chuckled, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t go siccing the girls on me, Taylor. I didn’t know you had them fighting your battles for you.”

  Only 179 school days left until summer.

  Craig dropped an arm jovially over Dude the Teammate’s shoulders and eased away like a shark in search of his next meal. “Later, losers!
”

  The kids who’d stopped to gawk at the altercation dispersed. None of them said a thing, but they didn’t have to. Miles knew what they were thinking. The Jammer has picked his target for the year, and it isn’t me. Good.

  Henry and Josie rushed to Miles’s side. “Man, Miles,” Henry said guiltily. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t think Craig would go after you like that.”

  Josie looked Miles over with concern. “Are you hurt?”

  Miles leaped to his feet and tried not to wince, hoping that Josie didn’t notice he’d failed. “I’m perfect,” he snapped.

  Josie reached out a hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be embarrassed. Craig is just bigger than you, is all.”

  Miles turned away, adjusting his backpack on his shoulders. Fat load of good the contents were to him right now. If only the cape would let him grind the Jammer to mulch. Just once. “Gee,” Miles said. “Is Craig bigger than me? Thanks, Josie. I never noticed.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Josie said. “I’m going to class, then. I’ll see you there.”

  Miles couldn’t bear to look at her. “You go, too, Henry. I’ll see you at lunch.”

  Miles headed back in the direction of the school’s entrance. He needed some air.

  CHAPTER

  3

  OUTSIDE IN THE BUS CORRAL, Miles watched the kids filing past him and into the building. News spread like germs throughout Chapman Middle. By lunchtime everyone would have heard about the incident with the Jammer. An entire summer spent being the city’s hero, and the Jammer had turned Miles into a goat in less time than it takes to do the opening coin toss at a football game. Miles had been an idiot to ever think this year was going to be different.

  He took his phone from his pocket and checked the screen.

  No missed calls. No messages.

  Miles noticed the time. Ten minutes until the first-period bell.