Andy Roid and the Unexpected Mission

by Felice Arena

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  ANDY ROID

  AND

  THE UNEXPECTED MISSION

  It’s official – Andy’s joining the secret service. But when he’s sent on a job halfway through his training, is he up to the challenge? With no back-up and no experience, this life-or-death mission will be the ultimate test!

  CONTENTS

  PREVIOUSLY

  1 AGENT TRAINING

  2 BULLETS

  3 EYES AND EARS

  4 HOSTAGE

  5 SWIM

  6 TIME BOMB

  7 UP IN FLAMES

  8 THE BADGER CORPORATION

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  Books in the series

  1: ANDY ROID and

  the Superhuman Secret

  2: ANDY ROID and

  the Field Trip Terror

  3: ANDY ROID and

  the Camp Howl Crusaders

  4: ANDY ROID and

  the Heroes of the Night

  5: ANDY ROID and

  the Turbine Runaways

  6: ANDY ROID and

  the Sinister Showdown

  7: ANDY ROID and

  the Unexpected Mission

  8: ANDY ROID and

  the Tracks of Death

  9: ANDY ROID and

  the Missing Agent

  10: ANDY ROID and

  the Avalanche of Evil

  . . .WHEN YOU’RE HALF BOY, HALF MACHINE,

  IT’S HARD NOT TO BE A HERO. . .

  PREVIOUSLY . . .

  Andy’s definitely not a regular kid – his parents are government scientists, specialising in robotics, and after a terrible accident, they’ve rebuilt him using their latest, untested research. His parents nicknamed him Andy Roid, but it’s more than just a nickname: it’s his government code name.

  Andy’s rebuild has given him superhuman powers, and he’s already had to face a dangerous enemy – an evil organisation called the Triple S and its leader Dr Baffi.

  Now Andy has been recruited by the government as a secret agent, with his friend Judd as his partner. His parents have reluctantly agreed, and have upgraded his powers and hardware, but even Andy doesn’t know whether he’ll be up to the challenge, or what to expect.

  But as all good agents know – sometimes you have to expect the unexpected. . .

  Andy stood looking out over the ocean as fighter jets howled and whooshed across the sky.

  He shook his head in amazement. If someone had told him a year ago that he’d be standing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on the runway of an aircraft carrier as tall as a skyscraper, he never would have believed them.

  He turned to look at his dad, who was super excited.

  The wind whipped through Andy’s hair as the massive aircraft carrier sliced through the water.

  ‘Okay. . .’ his dad said. ‘Once we authorise the upgrade the new titanium springs and turbo-boost reflex sensors will kick in and give you more power than you’ll ever need.’

  ‘Just be aware,’ Andy’s mum said, ‘that despite the upgrades something could still go wrong. This is all new technology.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I get it, Mum!’ Andy interrupted. ‘Am I going to do this or not?’

  He saw the General, their boss, break away from a briefing with the ship’s captain and walk towards them.

  ‘Andy, I admire your enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘And your training so far has been superb. I couldn’t be happier. But you need to listen to your parents – we can’t send you out on your first mission without knowing that you’re in tip-top condition. Understood?’

  Andy nodded. The General was right. His parents weren’t the world’s best bio-robotics scientists for nothing, and he still hadn’t finished his training to be a professional spy.

  It had been hard to convince his parents to let him take the job as a teen agent. Working in the shady world of espionage was a pretty awesome first job. It wasn’t like working part-time at a fast-food joint.

  This was a serious business – a death-defying business. But Andy already knew that his life would never be the way it was before he had become Andy Roid. He couldn’t just sit back and be a normal kid, and he wanted to use his differences for good, to help others.

  Andy’s parents had eventually come around to the idea of him joining the secret service, but his mum especially wasn’t happy about it.

  ‘Okay, when you clock thirty kilometres an hour, your iris-speedometer will be activated,’ she said, as she tapped at a touch-screen tablet called the turbo-dashboard, authorising the final few upgrades to the bionic parts of Andy’s brain and body. ‘Numbers will flicker across your vision and show you your speed. This will be recorded automatically on your palm screen and here on the dashboard.’

  ‘It will also record how long you can jump.’ Andy’s dad grinned. ‘How are your Bionic Sonics feeling?’

  Andy looked down at his custom-made super-durable sneakers.

  ‘They feel awesome, dad,’ Andy said, jumping from foot to foot.

  ‘They’re feather light and packed with hydrophobic coatings and microscopic steel chords,’ Andy’s dad said proudly. ‘Velocity rated to three hundred kilometres per hour. I used the same counter-balanced rubber used on formula-one racing car tyres.’

  Andy smiled. He had no idea what his dad was saying half the time, but it sounded cool.

  ‘All right, Andy,’ said the General. ‘Let’s see what you can do. Is your parachute firmly secured?’

  Andy nodded. He went to slap the back of his neck only to remember that he no longer needed to switch himself on. He was now ‘on’ all the time.

  ‘Okay. Let’s do this!’ he said.

  Andy’s parents and the General put on their noise-reduction headphones.

  The General waved to the officers in the control tower and an F-18 Hornet fighter jet rolled out onto the open deck. The crew swiftly got the aircraft into position, attaching it to two massive steam-powered catapults. The engine’s jets revved loudly as it prepared to shoot down the runway.

  The pilot gave Andy a thumbs-up from the cockpit. Andy did the same in response. His heart was pounding furiously in his chest. His entire body was vibrating and twitching with adrenaline – or was that just the effect of the new reflex sensors and the upgrade his mum had just authorised? He took a deep breath.

  The General raised a red flag. This was it.

  The General dropped the flag, and the F-18 Hornet screamed and roared down the runway.

  The noise was deafening. Andy was glad his eardrums were made of electrodes and metallic coils – otherwise they would have shattered.

  ‘Woah!’ he gasped as he watched the jet go from zero to 257 km/h in two seconds.

  That’s seriously fast, thought Andy, as the Hornet rocketed off the carrier’s deck and zoomed into the sky. In another few seconds it was just a speck on the horizon.

  ‘Now it’s your turn, Andy,’ the General cried, raising the flag again.

  Andy leaned forward and widened his stance. ‘I might not run that fast, but I’m definitely going to go for it,’ he muttered under his breath, looking up to see his parents nod proudly.

  The General dropped the flag and Andy was off.

  WHOOOOOSSSSHHHHH!

  His arms and legs scissored up and down like piston beams on a train.

  ‘Faster! Faster! Faster!’ Andy willed himself.

  Almost immediately, numbers began to flash across his field of vision. The iris-speedometer had been activated. 30km/h, 31km, 32km/h, 35km/h, 38km/h, 39km/h, 44km/h, 55km/h, 57km/h, 59km/h. . .

  ‘I gotta go faster!’ he yelled, approaching the end of the runway and the edge of the carrier’s upper deck. 66km/h, 69km/h, 72km
/h, 88km/h, 93km/h, 98km/h. . .

  When Andy reached the end of the runway, he took one massive leap. The highest figure he saw flash across his eyes was 102.35 km/h.

  ‘WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!’ he hollered as he soared off the ship and out over the ocean.

  ‘THIS IS AWESOME!’ Andy screamed, feeling like he was flying like the F-18 Hornet.

  But when gravity kicked in, Andy began to drop rapidly towards the choppy waves below. It was like falling from a twenty-storey building.

  He quickly tugged at the parachute chord and let out a sigh of relief when it opened. He had no idea if he could land safely from this height.

  As the parachute flapped open, Andy was jerked upwards for several metres. For a moment he felt as if his stomach had been shoved up into his throat, then he fell slowly, looking out over the endless ocean until the big blue below swallowed him up with a splash.

  This is so much better than being in school, he thought as he dropped into the sea. This is seriously epic!

  Just a half hour later Andy was back on the upper deck dripping wet, but still grinning.

  ‘I clocked over a hundred,’ he said to his parents. ‘That’s the fastest I’ve run – ever!’

  ‘And you jumped fifty-five metres,’ said Andy’s dad, patting him on the back.

  ‘We’re still not sure how high you can jump and how far you can drop safely afterwards,’ Andy’s mum said as she dried his hair with a towel. ‘I’m not sure if the shock absorbers in your legs can take the pressure of landing after a free fall like that.’

  ‘Hitting water from that height is like hitting concrete,’ Andy’s dad said. ‘If you misjudge what’s a safe distance by even a few centimentres. . .well, you’d end up like a crushed soda can.’

  Andy shrugged off his mum and took the towel. He might be an agent in the making, but his parents still worried about him as if he was a little boy.

  ‘Headphones on!’ shouted the General, pointing towards another Hornet coming in for landing.

  The landing-signal officers guided the aircraft in as it roared across the runway, its tail-hook snagging on to the steel cables on deck.

  Andy watched in awe as the 24 000-kilo jet, which had been travelling at well over 200 km/h, screeched to a halt only metres away from where he stood.

  As the jet’s engines shut down, a pilot and a passenger emerged from the cockpit, both still wearing their flight helmets.

  Suddenly, the passenger pulled a weapon and pointed it directly at them.

  Andy’s jaw dropped. ‘HE’S GOT A GUN!’ he shouted.

  Andy had no time to think as he jumped in front of his parents just as the gunman pulled the trigger.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Andy threw his arms up in front of his face.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  The bullets ricocheted off Andy’s forearms like pebbles pinging off a car windscreen.

  Andy rushed for the aircraft and soared into the air. In a single bound he had leapt onto the nose of the jet.

  He kicked the gun out of the attacker’s hand before he could take another shot.

  THUMP!

  The attacker let loose with a strike, a forward punch to Andy’s face.

  BLOCK

  Andy swiped it away just in time, but the attacker kept coming at him. Using his other fist the attacker pressed forward with three sharp jabs. But Andy was too quick and within seconds he had the gunman in a strangle hold.

  ‘ANDY! LET HIM GO!’ his parents and the General yelled, rushing towards him.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ pleaded the pilot. ‘You’re choking him!’

  ‘Huh? What’s going on?’ said Andy, loosening his grip. ‘This dude just tried to kill us.’

  The pilot hurried to pull off the gunman’s helmet.

  ‘What the?’ said Andy, when he saw who he had in his grip. It was his best friend and fellow teen agent, Judd Shoemaker. ‘You?’ he said. ‘Why were you shooting at us?’

  Judd coughed and spluttered, massaging his throat. ‘Nice to see you too, dude!’

  ‘Come back down and we’ll explain,’ the General hollered.

  Andy wasn’t totally surprised that Judd would make such a showy entrance. He was the type of kid who oozed cool, even when he wasn’t trying. But the surprise-attack act had totally caught Andy off guard.

  ‘Good work, Judd. And well done, Andy,’ said the General. ‘A quick decisive response is what we like to see from our agents. If you want to be at the top of your game, you have to expect the unexpected, be on guard. Things aren’t always what they seem.’

  ‘That was a pretty risky training stunt,’ said Andy. ‘What about the bullets?’

  ‘They were rubber,’ said Judd.

  ‘But even if they had been real, the super-strength titanium plates that we installed in your forearms would have deflected them easily. That’s exactly what we wanted to see – you using them as shields,’ Andy’s dad said. ‘And your mother deactivated your laser just in case you tried to use that. We knew you would try everything else first, though.’ His dad beamed. ‘We knew you wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.’

  ‘And most importantly. . .’ added Andy’s mum, tapping on the turbo dashboard, ‘your neuro-reactors suggest that your response time to danger exceeds that exhibited by martial-arts masters and formula-one racing car drivers.’

  ‘There’s no stopping me now,’ Andy said.

  ‘Oh, yes, there is, young man,’ Andy’s dad replied. ‘You’re improved, not invincible. Remember you’re human first, machine second. You can still die. Your heart, your brain, and your vital organs are still vulnerable. A bullet or a knife to these. . .’ He shook his head, looking serious.

  ‘Yeah, dude – you still bleed like the rest of us,’ said Judd. ‘Don’t start thinking you’re Superman!’

  ‘I could still have squashed you like a bug,’ Andy said. ‘Next time you’re pretending to be a bad guy, maybe keep that in mind!’

  Later that day, Andy’s dad was taking him through some further testing in a large gymnasium on the fourth deck of the ship.

  Andy was guarding a soccer net. He was shifting from foot to foot, ready to give it his best goalie play. And standing at the opposite side of the gym, wearing a fearsome black-and-silver robotic suit, ready to take a penalty kick, was his over-excited father.

  The suit was awesome. It was just like the one Andy had faced when he had battled Dr Baffi, so he knew what it was capable of. He couldn’t help feeling a little bit nervous.

  ‘Bring it on, Dad,’ he said, as his dad flipped down the red visor. ‘Or should that be Ironman?’

  ‘That’s Mister Ironman to you!‘ he said, his voice echoing from inside the iron helmet. ’And this one’s for the world cup!’

  Andy’s dad rushed in towards the soccer ball, the powerful exoskeleton making his movements super fast and super powerful. . .

  THOOOOMMMMMPP!

  The ball rocketed at Andy, faster than a bullet.

  But Andy got his fist to it.

  KABOOOOOOMMMMMMM!

  The ball exploded in a cloud of powder and a million pieces of leather. The lightning speed and impact of Andy’s bionic fist was too much for it.

  ‘WOO-HOOO!’ Andy cheered. ‘And the cup goes to Team Andy! Hear the crowd go wild as he makes the save of the century!’

  ‘Okay, okay, well done.’ His dad stomped forward. ‘That kick had a three hundred and forty kilometre rating-force behind it.’

  ‘Woah, seriously? I’m loving this upgrade.’

  ‘Well, good!’ Andy's dad pulled up the visor of the helmet. ‘Because next we’ll check out your new voice-command system. You can initiate your apps and your communications systems without using the touch-screen – though you still have that option. If you’re contacting agency staff, you’ll need to use codenames,’ he said. ‘Let’s give that a try. Say “Channel Wellspring”.’

  ‘Channel Wellspring,’ Andy repeated.

  ‘Hi, sweetie.’

&n
bsp; Andy looked down at his palm screen and saw the image of his mother smiling back up at him. She was standing on the upper deck and Andy could hear the roar of the fighter jets in the background.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ he said. ‘Who’s Agent Wellspring?’

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, beaming. ‘I finally have a codename. Now, if for some reason you can’t use video chat, it reverts to plain old voice chat.’ Her image now disappeared from Andy’s palm screen, but her voice was coming through loud and clear in Andy’s eardrums. ‘And if that’s no good it will go to text message. What’s the sound level like?’ she asked.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Andy. ‘But it’s weird to have you inside my head like this, Mum.’

  ‘Well, in the field you’ll have an online support agent who you’ll be able to contact at any time. He’ll always be accessible on Channel Einstein. Try it.’

  ‘Okay. . .Channel Einstein,’ said Andy, wondering who the agent would be.

  ‘Hey, Andy! Surprise! I bet you weren’t expecting me!’

  Andy’s grinned when he saw the image of his friend Reggie Hopkins smiling up at him from his palm screen. ‘I wasn’t! How are you?’

  He hadn’t seen Reggie for six months, not since they’d captured Dr Baffi together. Andy thought he had said goodbye to his geeky friend for good – especially when he had learned that he wasn’t returning to Renfrew High.

  ‘I’m great. . .I’m on contract to the agency,’ Reggie said, polishing his thick glasses. ‘The General approached me about becoming a data analyst. They thought that with my advanced intellect, my computer skills, and my vast knowledge about. . .well, everything. . .I could be useful. I’ve just finished an intensive month on computer hacking. It was brilliant. And – this is so cool! The General and his team have transformed my bedroom into a control room! I’ll be your eyes, ears and brains on this mission, Andy.’

  Andy was speechless. He glanced over at his father. Judging by his smile, he had known about this all along.

  ‘Oh. . .I almost forgot. Someone wants to say hello to you,’ added Reggie, moving out of frame. A few seconds later he returned with a rat in his hands.