by Rob Vlock
Will gaped at him wide-eyed. “Who—what is that?”
“It’s a Tick. He’s been modified for hand-to-hand combat.” Alicia ducked under one of the guy’s swinging arms and rolled to the side. “They start with a basic humanoid form, then improve it.”
“Doesn’t look like an improvement to me,” Will whimpered, ducking behind a potted plant. He pulled the copy of me down with him and tried not to attract the Tick’s attention. Then, as usual, he curled into the fetal position and stuck his fingers in his ears.
Alicia whipped a knife out of her backpack and pushed me out of the way just as the raging creature swung a massive arm at me. “Look out, Sven! Stay back!”
She slashed Mega-Shallix’s arm. A long red gash opened up the length of his forearm, but it might as well have been a mosquito bite—he didn’t even flinch.
Even though my brain was mostly preoccupied with trying to find a way to put as much distance as possible between myself and the killer Tick, I couldn’t help but wonder why Alicia had saved me from him. I mean, I was the enemy, wasn’t I?
When the big sack of muscle made a grab for Alicia, she rolled to the left and hacked at the back of his leg, just behind the knee. She leapt out of the way as his right knee buckled, then thrust the knife up under the monster’s ribs. He dropped heavily, the floor shaking under his weight.
For a second, I thought she’d killed him.
But no such luck. As I watched, the wound on his forearm closed up like a zipper. The blood that stained his clothes seemed to get sucked back into his body. A second later, he stood on his feet, as good as new.
Mega-Shallix’s massive hands reached out toward Alicia’s throat, but she ducked and avoided his grasp. She darted under his legs and popped up behind him, her knife plunging half a dozen times into his back before he had time to turn and face her. But he still didn’t react. She might as well have been stabbing a side of beef.
She continued to dodge his attacks—rolling away when he tried to crush her with his size-twenty feet, knifing his arms whenever he reached for her.
But I could tell she was getting tired. And it wouldn’t take more than one hit from this guy to break every bone in her body. I had to get her Tick popper.
Alicia slashed again at Mega-Shallix with her knife. He caught it in his bare hand and ripped it from her grasp. It whistled by my ear as he tossed it away, and stuck into the wall right between the eyes of a dancing teddy bear decal.
He grabbed her by the throat.
“No!” I screamed. “Let go of her, you ugly toilet-brush-headed freak!”
I took a deep breath and sprinted toward the fish tank. I only made it two steps before the giant Synthetic slammed me against the wall. I struggled to catch my breath, pressed up against a flu vaccination poster by a body as wide as an eighteen-wheeler.
Mega-Shallix wasn’t done with me yet. He let go of Alicia, who fell to the floor, gasping for breath, and wrapped his huge hand around my head. Then he started to squeeze. Everything turned red as the pressure in my eyeballs increased. Another second or two and my head was going to be goo.
“Sven!” I heard Alicia scream.
Through a red blur, I saw Alicia pull her knife out of the teddy bear’s head and start frantically stabbing at Mega-Shallix. He barely even noticed.
Then Mega-Shallix spoke. It sounded just like the normal Dr. Shallix, only deeper and more distant. As if the real Dr. Shallix was talking to me from the bottom of a well. “Sven, I am very disappointed in you. Very disappointed. Come with me now to complete your mission, and I will release you. I will even promise to finish your friends off quickly.”
This is it, I thought. We’re doomed.
Without warning, the half-completed Synthetic copy of Will we had left on the floor of Dr. Shallix’s lab came ambling into the waiting room from the hallway. It walked over to Mega-Shallix, bumped into his massive leg, stumbled backward, and fell against the side of the aquarium. The fish tank rocked back on its pedestal, then tipped forward onto the floor with a huge crash.
An explosion of glass. Fish flopping everywhere. The Tick popper skittered across the floor.
At least it had been enough to get Mega-Shallix’s attention. He turned to see the source of the noise and stepped on a flopping Synthetic fish. His foot slipped out from under him, his legs flew up, and he landed heavily on his back on the floor.
Well, technically, it wasn’t the floor he landed on. It was the Tick popper. There was a brief crackle of electricity, then—
WHOOOM!!!!
The Tick popper exploded. Along with Mega-Shallix.
His grip on my head loosened, and I realized that, apart from his arm, there was very little left. The Tick popper had reduced him to a big puddle of red, slimy . . . yuck!
I pried his fingers from my skull and rolled onto my back, gasping for breath. My head felt like somebody had been using it to drive nails.
“Is everyone okay?” Alicia called out.
Will and my copy got up from behind the potted plant. Will nodded, slack-jawed.
Alicia ran over to me. “Sven! Can you walk? We have to get out of here before Shallix sends something else!”
She helped me to my feet.
“Wait. So that wasn’t actually him, right? Dr. Shallix?” I asked her. “He was . . . he was horrible!”
She shook her head. “He must have modified a copy of himself to guard the office. The fish probably alerted him.”
She picked up the remains of her Tick popper. It had blown apart like a firecracker. “Man, we needed this,” she said.
“Can you fix it?” Will asked.
She dropped it on the floor. “It’s junk. The entire magazine must have exploded.” She wiped her knife off on the leg of her pants, then put it away. “Whatever. We’ll make do. Let’s get out of here.”
I stopped her. “Wait. Did you ever think that you could have just let that thing kill me and there’d be one less Tick in the world?”
I saw her jaw clench. “It occurred to me.”
“So why didn’t you?”
She glanced at the ceiling for a second or two. Then she turned toward the exit. “Let’s go.”
Alicia, Will, my copy, and I stepped over what remained of the front door and headed toward the principal’s SUV.
“Hold on a second,” I said to the others. “Alicia, what about the drain cleaner you put in the gas tank?”
She put her hands on her hips defiantly. “What? You want me to admit my plan didn’t work? Is that it?”
“No,” I countered. “It’s just that it might not be—”
“Fine,” she interrupted. “You want me to say it? I’ll say it. My plan didn’t—”
KAAAABOOOOOMMMMMM!
Heat singed our faces and shattered glass and twisted metal showered down around us as Principal Papadopoulos’s SUV exploded into a massive fireball.
CHAPTER 23.0:
< value= [I Really Get to Know Myself] >
THE EXPLOSION LIFTED ALL FOUR of us off our feet and threw us backward almost ten feet. We tumbled through the air and landed hard on the pavement. Well, I landed on the pavement. Everyone else landed on me. My face was wedged against Fake Me’s backside. I could hear Butt Face’s muffled voice through the seat of my jeans. “What’s up, my peeps?”
“Is everyone okay?” Alicia asked, pulling me to my feet.
“I think I fell on my face,” Fake Me replied.
The acrid smoke from the burning car made me cough. “What happened?”
“Hmm, delayed reaction, I guess,” Alicia mused. “Maybe I should have added more drain cleaner.”
“I think maybe we should discuss how much drain cleaner you should have added once we’re out of here,” Will suggested as the sound of sirens filled the air.
Once we made sure there were no serious injuries, we took off at a run in the direction of my house. It was a fair distance away, but with the principal’s SUV lying in about a million pieces on the street,
running was our only option. Unless we wanted to wait for another Mega-Shallix to show up.
We took off at a sprint, looking back over our shoulders every few seconds to make sure nothing was following us.
A few blocks away, we stopped to catch our breath.
“That was horrible,” Will panted. He turned to Alicia, a look of admiration spreading across his face. “How did you fight him like that? Weren’t you scared?”
“Me? Scared of that little thing? Nah.” She tried to sound casual, but her voice shook when she said it.
When we were sure nothing was coming after us, we circled back toward my house.
On the way, I got to spend some quality time with myself. Which really sucked, because myself was a huge pain in the butt.
At first, Fake Me just stared at me for, like, two minutes straight as we walked, tripping and stumbling over the uneven sidewalk. Then he tried to pick my nose. I don’t mean he tried to pick the copy of my nose on his face. He tried to pick my nose. The one I was breathing through. I swatted his hand away and turned my back toward him.
That wasn’t much of an improvement, though, since he just kept poking me in the back and trying to stick his fingers in my ears.
“Stop it!” I yelled.
Fake Me stopped. For about three seconds. Then he started making fart noises with his armpits.
Alicia turned to me. “Sven, cut it out!”
“It’s not me!” I cried. “It’s him!”
“Looks like you to me,” she replied.
Then she and Will snorted with laughter. Fake Me started laughing too, even though it was totally unfunny.
I glared at him. “Just stop being annoying, okay?”
He looked back at me, his eyes kind of crossing and uncrossing and crossing again.
He burped. Five times.
Then his finger found his own nose. He pulled out a big, green booger, studied it for a few moments, and sucked it off his finger with a slurp.
“What the heck?” I screamed. “What did you do, Alicia? I’m some kind of drooling, idiotic loser! This is never going to work. There’s no way my parents are going to believe this is me.”
“I told you the programming might not be quite right,” she responded. “It was a rush job.”
“Not quite right? This is a disaster!” Then I had a horrifying thought. “He’s going to school in my place, isn’t he? He’s going to make my entire middle school career even worse than it already is! Everyone’s going to think I’m a slobbering moron!”
“No comment,” said Will. Then he held out his hand and Alicia slapped him five.
“You guys suck,” I grumbled.
By the time we arrived at my house, I was about ready to kill myself. By myself, I meant Fake Me. We stopped behind a row of bushes around the corner and spent a good half hour trying to teach Fake Me how to talk to my parents the right way. It didn’t go well.
“Okay, repeat after me. Hi, Mom, I’m home,” I said to my double.
For him, that translated to “How’s it goin’, Mom?”
Then Butt Face called out from inside Fake Me’s pants, “Did you say something, my peeps?”
“I said, ‘How’s it goin’, Mom?’ ” Head Face replied.
“What’s up with that, my peeps? I’m not your mom,” Butt Face pointed out.
“Look, can we try something else?” I asked when they had finished laughing. “How about, what’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Hey, Mom. How’s dinner goin’?” was his version.
“Dad, I spent two hours practicing throwing the football,” I tried.
“Dad, how’s the football goin’?” Fake Me said.
“Hey,” Butt-Face chimed in, “what’s up, my peeps? I can’t see anything. Pull down our pants.”
It was completely hopeless. But Alicia didn’t really care if Fake Me totally destroyed my life while we were figuring out how to save the world. She just aimed him toward my house and told him good luck.
We watched Fake Me ring the front doorbell. My mom opened the door and hugged him. Then he tried to pick her nose. Then the door closed.
CHAPTER 24.0:
< value= [I’m Really Mean to a Woodland Creature] >
ONCE WE HAD SET FAKE Me loose upon the world, we hurried back to Alicia’s place.
“So, I’m just gonna head home, okay?” Will said nervously when we got there. He flipped the light switch on and off forty-seven times, even though the house had no electricity. “My parents are probably freaking right now.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Alicia said.
“Why wouldn’t I think it’s a good idea?” Will asked.
“No reason,” she answered calmly. “Except Shallix will be looking for you. Because you know he’s actually an evil Tick and not a real human. But, you know what? Good for you for standing up to him.”
She walked to the door and opened it for Will.
The color left Will’s face and he started flipping the light switch again. “Um, you know, uh . . .”
“But if you want to hang out here for a while, that’s cool too.” Alicia grinned. “It’s totally safe here.”
As if on cue, we heard a scratching of claws on the wood floor and something darted into the room. All three of us jumped about a foot in the air. But once we got a good look at what had joined us, Will, Alicia, and I exchanged embarrassed glances. It was a squirrel.
Just a regular old squirrel.
Except for the white, spiky fur that stood out all over its oversize head.
Oh, and the fact that it talked.
“Ha-ha, I see you,” it chuckled in a high-pitched chitter. “You thought you could hide, yes? But there is no hiding from me. I can find you wherever you go.”
Will and I backed slowly away from the creepy talking squirrel. But Alicia just stared at it with a half smile on her face.
“I take it you’re Shallix?” She said “Shallix” like it was a swear word.
“Ah,” the squirrel replied after running up to her and sniffing her feet. “You must be the girl from the Settlement. I am sorry I cannot meet you in person. This avatar lacks . . . dignity, yes? But it is an excellent form in which to follow a group of naughty children. Still, I am saddened that I will not have the chance to kill you face-to-face.”
The squirrel laughed. It sounded like the real Dr. Shallix on helium.
Alicia wasn’t impressed. “Oh, I’m so scared. So what are you going to do? Nibble me to death with your little squirrel teeth?”
“No, no,” Shallix Squirrel answered. “I have created something very special for you—the two things that humans are most scared of. You will meet them shortly, yes? They are on their way here now.”
The Shallix Squirrel turned to me. “And you, Sven. It is good to see you are still functional. But why am I calling you that? I should call you by your real designation. Seven.”
“What . . . what are you talking about?” I asked uncertainly. “What do you mean ‘Seven’? My name is Sven.”
Dr. Shallix chuckled. “No, no. That’s what your human parents called you when they adopted you as an infant after I created you. They have no idea who you really are, of course. Your actual designation is Seven Omicron, yes? You are the seventh model of the Omicron line.”
I shook my head. “Omicron line . . . ?”
“Of Synthetics. You should be proud of that. A perfect reproduction of a human being, yes? Not even a real human can tell the difference. Except for maybe a doctor. Which is why I am here. I replaced the human Dr. Manson Shallix well before you were fabricated to ensure your true nature would not be discovered. You have been functioning marvelously, by the way, yes? Right down to your fart subroutine and nose-picking algorithm. I oversaw that part of your programming myself,” he added proudly.
“I don’t pick my nose!” I objected.
“Of course you do. You have been programmed to act like an average human in nearly every way, yes? You are so very special,
Seven. Our secret weapon, designed to carry out the ultimate offensive against their disgusting race. And on your thirteenth birthday, srok resplaty, you will be ready to destroy every repugnant human on Earth and win the war for us once and for all.”
“What?” I cried. “No! I don’t want to destroy anyone!”
Hearing him tell me that I would be responsible for destroying humans felt like someone had just punched me in the heart.
“Of course you do, my boy. It is why you were created.” He scurried closer to me. “I can offer you one more chance, Seven. Come back with me and carry out your mission, yes?”
I stepped toward the rodent, feeling a surge of anger boil up from deep inside. “Come with you so I can help you kill humans? Your computer brain must be malfunctioning! Why would I ever come with you?”
“Why?” he asked with what probably would have passed for a smile if he hadn’t been a squirrel. “That is a very good question, yes? Tell me, Seven, how have the human children treated you at school? With kindness? Acceptance? No. I have been watching you over the years. They hate you. They hate how you are different. That is one of the biggest shortcomings of the human race—they despise what does not fit into their preconceived notions of normal. You are superior to them all, Seven, yet for your whole life you have been shunned, shamed, bullied by humans. You are surrounded by humans, yet you are virtually alone, yes?”
His words were like a punch in the gut. Everything he said was true. It was as if he was reading my emotions straight from the inside of my heart. My stomach burned with . . . what? Anger? Shame? Hatred? Envy? Maybe a mixture of them all.
My throat tightened and my breath came in short, raspy gasps.
“But among Synthetics, Seven,” he went on, “you will be a hero. An entire race will owe you its gratitude. And you will be there to see it flourish in centuries to come. I can stop you from aging, Seven. I can give you eternal life.”
“What are you talking about?” I breathed. The floor felt like it was tilting this way and that. My whole world threatened to turn upside down. “Eternal life? You’re . . . you’re nuts.”
At the mention of nuts, Shallix Squirrel turned in a tight little circle and chattered excitedly. “Nuts! Where?” Then he recovered. “My apologies. This body sometimes has a mind of its own, yes? But I am not insane, if that is what you are suggesting. It can be done, Seven. The key is in your blood. Which, technically, is not blood at all, but a transport matrix made up of simple iron-carbon composite nanomachines. Each of these microscopic machines is capable of extracting raw materials at a molecular level from the food you eat. They use those building blocks to create living tissue, just like that of a human. That is how you could appear to grow from an infant into an adolescent boy—the transport matrix simply added to your body to perfectly mimic human aging. You understand, yes?”