“Agent Zero,” he said, not standing or smiling. “Have a seat.”
I took a chair across from him while Agent Smiley crossed the room and joined the other two agents at the small card table.
“You succeeded?” Director Isadoris asked.
I unzipped my backpack and looked down into the splattered interior. I debated giving him the whole bag, but then decided he didn’t really need to know that I had snagged a few spare gadgets from the pantry. After all, he was the one who thought it wasn’t worth telling me about the Chum Bucket contingency plan.
I plucked out the bag containing Gomez’s hard drive and plopped it onto the desk.
“There it is,” I said.
He nodded and shoved the messy heap into a duffel bag.
“Agent Scion,” Director Isadoris said, “take this to the tech lab and see what you can find.”
One of the agents working behind him stood and walked over to retrieve the bag. Then he slung it over his shoulder and left the office without saying a word. Director Isadoris treated the entire transaction as if he were asking a friend to get him a soda from the fridge. Then he turned back to me with a blank look.
I tried to suppress my annoyance. Did he have any idea what I’d gone through to get that? How close I had come to getting myself kicked out of school? How I’d risked being arrested by the NSB? How Agent Chum Bucket actually had been arrested? If it wasn’t that important, then why ask CB and me to do it at all?
Director Isadoris must have noticed my glare.
“What?” he snapped. “You want a medal every time you complete an assignment?”
I was stunned by his words. And even more stunned to see one of the agents behind him smirking. I just sat there and failed to come up with any sort of a reply.
“That’s what this job is, Agent Zero,” Director Isadoris continued. “You’re given a dangerous mission, and if you can complete it without being captured or killed, you are given another. This was just another day at the office. You don’t see florists getting a ticker tape parade each time they pick a flower, do you?”
I shook my head, despite not really knowing what a ticker tape parade was. He had a point either way, but that still didn’t quite take the sting out of his words.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, not able to look him in the eyes.
Then he sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“No, I’m sorry, Agent Zero,” he said. “My words still stand, but they should have been expressed more tactfully. I’m used to dealing with adults, after all.”
Even his apology felt like a backhanded slap to my face. But I nodded and accepted it. Once again, I couldn’t really argue with his logic.
“As I’m sure you’ve noticed,” he continued, “things are a little different around here at the moment. First, we diverted a healthy chunk of agents to a new initiative, one that could be a real game changer. But even more drastic has been the need to scale back to essential personnel only. We simply don’t know who we can trust anymore. The fact is, we’ve never had a security breach of this severity in the seventy-year history of the Agency. A former agent, systematically taking down every aspect of our operation . . . Medlock has all but destroyed us from the inside out.”
I nodded slowly, the true gravity of the threat starting to sink in.
“Which is why capturing him has become our sole objective at the moment. Every other resource—outside the new initiative that we have—is now aimed entirely at finding, detaining, or eliminating Medlock. In the pursuit of this task, everything—even an agent—is considered expendable.”
I could only assume that was his way of confirming that Agent Chum Bucket was now on his own. I wanted to ask the director if he counted himself as expendable, too, but I stayed quiet. I didn’t want to make him even angrier than he already was.
“And in line with that,” Director Isadoris said, “we have another immediate assignment for you. One that relates back to our primary subdirective, which is to figure out what exactly Medlock is up to. That is, if you feel you’re up to the challenge.”
Director Isadoris might have been a little sarcastic with that last bit. But it didn’t matter: I was in too deep to back out now.
“Yeah, I’m in,” I said.
“Good. As you know, we believe Medlock has yet another operative inside the school. Someone who likely framed Principal Gomez, set him up to get caught by the NSB. And it could be an adult, but it’s just as likely another student.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“Jake, Medlock’s son,” Director Isadoris said. “Children are easier to manipulate than adults, and generally appear less suspicious. And, as you and Jake have both demonstrated, can be just as effective. While Medlock could have planted adult agents at the school, it’s equally possible that Jake recruited other agents himself among the student populace.”
It made sense, but it was hard to imagine who else might be working for the bad guys. What kid would get on board with a plot for world domination, or whatever Medlock’s endgame was, besides his own kid?
“Let me guess,” I said. “You want me to find out who this inside agent is?”
“Indeed,” Director Isadoris confirmed. “It could be anyone, so suspect everyone, and discount no one.”
“One thing I still don’t get,” I speculated aloud, “is why Medlock would go to the trouble of framing Gomez if he wasn’t working with the Agency.”
“Well, that’s another thing we’re hoping you can help us find out,” Director Isadoris said. “It must have something to do with the base, the Agency, and our ties to the school. As we speak, a new principal, Ms. Pullman, is being brought in to take over for Mr. Gomez. Her background checks out: she has a family, a complete educational record; it’s hard to imagine that she could be under Medlock’s thumb. But circumstances dictate that we consider her a suspect for the time being.”
“So, what’s next?” I asked.
“Well, that’s hard to answer completely until we know what Medlock is up to. Once we figure that out, we can come up with a definitive way to stop him. So, next is simply doing everything we can to uncover his plans, starting with a thorough search through the files on the hard drive you brought in. Hopefully to confirm that it was a frame job and also look for clues as to who executed it and how and why,” Director Isadoris said. “In the meantime, the new direct assignment for you and Agent Atlas is twofold. One: Discover who, if anyone, framed Gomez and continues to execute small acts of sabotage that are interfering with Agency operations. Two: Look for evidence inside the school regarding why Gomez may have been framed, and ascertain Ms. Pullman’s possible involvement. I’m going to level with you, Agent Zero: With Agent Chum Bucket in NSB custody, our other agents working on the new initiative, and Agents Nineteen and Blue still not ready for fieldwork, you and Agent Atlas are our best chance at finding out anything from inside the school.”
I nodded. It was pretty simple, though I didn’t really have any idea how I was going to start. Not yet, anyway.
“Speaking of Agents Nineteen and Blue . . . would it be possible for me to visit them?” I asked.
Director Isadoris sighed and said, “Yes, but I must warn you that you may not like what you see.”
CHAPTER 10
LUKE SKYWALKER AND THE BIONIC WOMAN
AGENT SMILEY ESCORTED ME TO THE MEDICAL UNIT. WE DIDN’T pass a single person along the way. The emptiness of Agency headquarters somehow made me feel empty as well. It made me question why any of us were still trying, even though the answer was pretty obvious and undeniable.
The med unit was very much like a hospital, just with fewer people. It consisted of a few wide, bright, and generically tiled hallways with rooms branching off on both sides. As we entered, I saw a few men and women in white coats and green scrubs, holding clipboards and discussing something just down the hallway to our left.
Agent Smiley asked me to follow her into a large room with several huge p
ieces of machinery that looked straight out of a science fiction movie. In fact, one machine, which was basically just a huge glass tank filled with clear liquid, looked almost identical to a bacta tank. A bacta tank is the thing that they put Luke Skywalker in after Han Solo rescues him on the ice planet of Hoth at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. I’m not a Star Wars geek, but Dillon definitely was and he made me watch the whole series at least once a year, complete with his thorough breakdowns, commentaries, behind-the-scenes trivia, and explanations of various set pieces.
“It’s like a bacta tank,” I said as we entered the room.
Agent Smiley gave me a look. Then she motioned for me to follow her around to the other side, and pointed at the top of the machine.
Affixed to the top of the metal seal was a long piece of white tape. On it, someone had written these words in thick black marker: Bacta Tank I.
“One of our lab technicians is a science fiction nerd,” she said humorlessly.
I resisted the urge to laugh and shook my head as a young guy in a white coat and scrubs entered the room. He walked over to a small desk in the corner and opened a folder. He leafed through the papers for a few moments, jotted something down, and then came over to us.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“We’re here to see Agents Blue and Nineteen,” Agent Smiley said.
“Of course,” the doctor said. “This way.”
He led us into an adjacent room. It was nearly identical to the one we’d just come from. This room also had a bacta tank, except this tank wasn’t empty. Floating inside it, just like Luke Skywalker, was Agent Nineteen. A breathing mask was affixed to his face, and his eyes were closed. I saw several nasty bullet wounds in his torso, as well as several older scars scattered about his abdomen, back, arms, and legs.
“He suffered the more severe injuries of the two agents,” the doctor said behind me. “He’s currently in a medically induced coma while the tank does its thing, so to speak.”
“A coma?” I said, frowning.
“Don’t worry,” the doctor assured me. “It’s standard procedure. We find that being submerged in the tank while conscious can cause claustrophobia, disorientation, and other undesirable side effects. Agent Nineteen is in stable condition, and should make a full recovery. He has been through far worse in his career.”
I looked at my wounded mentor. It was hard to imagine him looking any worse. I tried to reassure myself that the doctor knew what he was doing. If he said Agent Nineteen would be fine, then he would be. I took a deep breath and forced myself to look away.
“What about Agent Blue?” I asked.
“I’m right here, Carson.”
I spun around, startled to hear his voice. He was lying in a hospital bed at the other end of the room. The sight of the occupied bacta tank had distracted me from noticing anything else when I’d entered.
“Mr. Jensen,” I said, rushing over to him.
Giving him a hug seemed awkward and unprofessional, so instead I reached out to shake his hand. But he had raised his hand for a high five, and so we ended up doing a kind of awkward hybrid where I grabbed and shook his raised palm. I looked down, embarrassed, and that’s when I noticed the void under the sheets where his leg should have been. There was nothing there.
“Your leg!” I gasped before I could stop myself.
“It’s okay, Carson,” he said. “They had to take it off, but it’s okay.”
“How is that okay?”
“Well, when you put it that way, I guess it is pretty horrible,” Agent Blue said, looking as if he was about to cry.
I panicked for a moment before realizing he was just having some fun with me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“I said, it’s okay. I’ll be getting a replacement artificial limb. Pretty high-tech stuff, as you can imagine. I’ll be like the Bionic Woman.”
I had no idea what he meant by that, but I was happy to see that he was staying so positive. I bet he was probably just feeling happy and lucky to be alive at all. The last time I saw him, sitting in the Ford Fusion we’d stolen from Snaketown, rambling deliriously and his venom-filled leg bloated and swollen, he looked just a few seconds from death.
And so instead of focusing on his leg, I filled him in on my new assignment, after Agent Smiley said it was all right. She had yet to crack half a smile since I’d met her. She hadn’t even so much as sneezed, or coughed. She was like a robot or something. Maybe she was a robot? With the Agency’s funding and technology, anything was possible.
“When will you be back?” I asked Agent Blue.
“The doctor says a few weeks. But I suspect I can get back sooner.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I don’t like not having you guys there.”
“You can handle the assignment just fine on your own,” he said. “You’re among the best agents I’ve ever worked with. Well, you still have a lot to learn, but you get what I’m saying. . . .”
He trailed off, clearly embarrassed. They must have had him drugged up on some good stuff. He had never been so jokey and smiley and complimentary before. Agent Blue was usually surly, not so different from Agent Smiley. I sort of liked the painkiller version of Agent Blue.
“Uh, thanks,” I said. “Still, I can’t wait for you to get back. I’m nervous, there’s so much resting on my shoulders. I’m still just a kid, after all.”
Agent Blue shook his head.
“No. You’re not just a kid. You’re Agent Zero.”
CHAPTER 11
RADIOACTIVE MUSHROOM RAMPAGES AND CHICKEN FEET RAIN
BEFORE DANIELLE AND I HAD BECOME SECRET AGENTS, I CAN’T think of one time when the two of us hung out without Dillon. He was my best friend and her twin brother, after all. Turns out, though, that this is necessary when plotting missions as secret agents. Dillon still had no idea that we were working with the Agency, with codenames and everything. Even with all of his crazy conspiracy theories, he still hadn’t guessed that one.
But meeting up without him later that night ended up being easier than expected.
“He’s distracted by this new master theory of his,” Danielle explained, as I closed the door to my room behind her. “It has something to do with all of the fungus growing around town. He’s convinced that nuclear missile silos surrounding Minnow have created radioactive mushrooms that will one day sprout legs and go on some sort of nationwide rampage, inducing black-and-white, slow-motion hallucinations that will involve talking buildings and pickled chicken feet falling from the sky.”
“Wait, the radioactive . . . What?”
Danielle grinned and shook her head.
“Carson, I have no idea. He didn’t give me much of an explanation. But he’s really into this one; I’ve never seen him so preoccupied before. Right now, he’s spending the night out in the coulee behind our house, extracting and carefully cataloging fungus samples.”
I laughed. “That sounds like Dillon.”
“So what happened this afternoon?”
I explained how I’d managed to get away with the evidence, and how Agent Chum Bucket had taken the fall for the success of the mission. I told her about how I’d met up with Director Isadoris and how eerie and deserted Agency headquarters had been. She was shocked, horrified, relieved all in one. Then I told her about our new mission.
“Pretty straightforward,” I said. “Find the enemy agent and figure out why they framed Gomez. Of course, this is assuming they let me back into school tomorrow. I mean, I did ditch out on seventh period. And I’m sure someone is going to want to punish me for the goats, even if it’s not Mr. Gomez. And that’s not even mentioning what Ms. Pullman will do once she arrives and reads the files Gomez kept on my pranks. And, that’s all aside from the possible scenario in which she is in fact an enemy secret agent sent to eliminate the Agency’s people inside the school.”
“Wait a second,” Danielle said, stemming my nervous rambling. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself.”
&
nbsp; “What do you mean?”
“You can’t control any of that stuff,” she said calmly. “Let’s just focus on our mission. If you get expelled, or whatever, then we’ll deal with it. But we’d be wasting time and energy worrying about it now.”
This was why Danielle was the perfect partner. She was way more logical and reasonable. After all, she’d figured out how to get inside the secret Mount Rushmore base to save Agent Nineteen and me all by herself. I guess if you really stepped back and looked at it, she was probably a better secret agent than I was. All I had going for me was being stupid enough to attempt the impossible and lucky enough to have succeeded a few times.
But all that is beside the point. What mattered was that Danielle was right; we needed to break down and make a plan for how to complete our two-pronged mission.
And so that’s what we did for the next hour.
We started by making a list of teachers and students who could have possibly been enemy spies. Here’s what we came up with:
1. Mr. Lepsing: seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher. He made the list simply by being a straight-up supersecretive weirdo. Mr. Lepsing had something strange hidden away in his supply closet. Everybody knew it. Rumors had swirled ever since I’d started school here about what it was that he kept in there. Some of the best theories were:
•A leopard that he was secretly feeding a mixture of steroids and school lunches, which was creating a master race of muscular leopard mutants (courtesy of Dillon)
•A colony of Venus flytraps that had evolved to devour small animals, and which Mr. Lepsing was training to eventually eat students (also courtesy of Dillon)
•An earwax collection that he had molded into various members of early-00s-era boy bands (Dillon)
•A giant box of all the chewed-up pens and pencils he’d confiscated from students over the years, which he was saving in order to clone his best students to create an army of hyperintelligent and obedient slaves (this is what most students believed—he was a bit of a freak about taking away writing implements if he saw you chewing on them—except the last part about cloning, which came from—you guessed it—Dillon)
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