“It’s been,” I said with a sigh.
“Oh.” He gave a great exhausted puff and sat down heavily on the floor.
I could see the dismay in Cara’s face as it hit home: Star Guy might be here, but he was missing in action. I looked around at my friends’ downcast faces. We were out of ideas and out of time.
Lara rooted through the shelves. “Here, take one of these,” she said, holding out a tin of pencils and flipping open the lid. “Faber-Castell 9000 Graphite 2B. Ideal for sketching, note-taking, and brainstorming plans to save the world.” As we each took a pencil, she shuffled a flip chart into the center of the room and flicked the pad to a fresh page. “We’re going back to the drawing board. Thoughts?”
There was the whir of an electric sharpener as Serge honed the point of his pencil. “My apologies, but I cannot think with a blunt instrument.”
Could we come up with another brilliant scheme before the aliens launched their invasion? The future seemed hopeless. Ours, mankind’s. Hundreds of miles below us, my mom and dad and grandparents were at my cousin Jenny’s wedding, unaware that they were a best man’s speech away from the end of the world.
As I thought about my family, I fiddled with the cuff links Dad had given me. My finger traced the words engraved on their surface. Perhaps if I rubbed hard enough, a genie would pop out and grant me three wishes.
The motor of the electric sharpener cut off. “Ah, zut,” said Serge. “It would appear that my 2B is not to be. The battery, she has died.”
I squeaked like a mole.
“What is it?” asked Cara.
“We just got our first wish,” I replied, taking the pencil sharpener from Serge and holding it up. Its surface shone under the harsh fluorescent ceiling lights. “I have a plan.”
“I knew you’d come up with one.” Lara beamed. “You always do.”
“Oui, you are like a man with an attack of the hiccups,” said Serge, nodding enthusiastically. “Except that the hiccups are plans. So, share with us this new hiccup.”
They all looked at me expectantly. I hadn’t felt this much pressure since basketball with Miss Dunham.
“Uh, well, it’s not exactly a new plan,” I said.
“Tried and tested.” Serge glowed. “Even better.”
“Actually, it’s the same plan that we started with. More or less.”
The Wraith poked his head from Lara’s pouch and squeaked. “He says, ‘Have you already forgotten that the aliens’ computer systems are mole-proofed?’”
“I said more or less. Less mole. And more . . .” I hesitated. They really weren’t going to like it. I took a deep breath.
“More . . . Christopher Talbot.”
To Save the Day
I stood back and let the others disagree loudly with my newish plan. They really didn’t like the idea of Christopher Talbot being involved, and who could blame them? I still couldn’t get over his betrayal. After all that hopping around deciding whether he wanted to be a superhero or supervillain, he had once and for all revealed his true colors: Penguin black. Joker purple. Doctor Doom green. And yet there was a tiny part of me that couldn’t believe he had gone all the way to the dark side. Even if he believed it.
I called for order, and the others fell silent.
“Like it or not, our former enemy—”
“And current enemy,” interrupted Lara.
I ignored her. “He is the only one left with a superpower capable of bringing down the sue-dunham.” I drew a circle on the flip chart and swiftly sketched a couple of continents. “Christopher Talbot is Earth’s last hope.”
I explained exactly why we needed him, and one by one, they reluctantly agreed that while far from the ideal choice, he was the only one we had.
With a single purpose, we set to work. Everyone had his or her role to play—apart from Zack, whose contribution was limited to sweating on the floor. I looked around me and saw not a ragtag bunch of kids way out of their depth who really should have tried harder to get through to someone in the army, but a cool superhero team on a last-ditch mission. This was how I’d pictured S.C.A.R.F.
“The Wraith has volunteered to locate Christopher Talbot,” Lara said. The mole squeaked his agreement. “He says he’s able to sniff out a two-inch worm from a range of three hundred feet, so finding a worm the size of Christopher Talbot will be a piece of mud. I think mud is like cake for him.”
We decided to split our forces. Serge and I would go with the Wraith while the others prepared for the escape part of the plan. Before we went our separate ways, Lara took me aside.
“Luke, what makes you think you can talk him into this?”
I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to tell her. She would be horrified, and might never look at me the same way again.
Why would Christopher Talbot listen to me? Because we shared a brain.
Not in the giant-brain-in-a-tank-with-electrodes sense of sharing. What we had was a deep understanding. I’d always known it. From the first time we’d met in his duplex mansion, to when I’d faced the villainous Quintessence in his volcano comic book store, I’d had a hunch that we were similar. But our connection had finally become clear to me as I was playing Puny Earthlings!, as I’d gleefully plotted the downfall of Star Guy and Dark Flutter. I shivered with a mixture of horror and pleasure as I remembered the dizzying sensations. I was angry. I was unstoppable. I was evil. A game controller was the only thing that separated me from becoming Christopher Talbot.
In the end I didn’t have to answer Lara’s question. The Wraith squeaked his eagerness to get on with the hunt and scurried out. With a cry of good luck to the others, Serge and I dashed after him, leaving the relative safety of the art room behind us.
“Your maman worried I was leading you astray,” I said to Serge as we trailed after the disappearing mole. “I wonder what she’d make of me leading you here.”
“I have the confession,” said Serge. “When my maman told me I could no longer see you, a part of me was relieved. I did not want to get into any more trouble at school,” he explained, his voice catching. “To be known as one of the weird kids. It is difficult enough to fit in when you are so . . .”
“French?” I suggested.
“I was going to say young. We are summer babies, you and I, which puts us among the youngest in the class. It is a hard prospect. We are minnows in a sea where hormones swim like great white sharks. Have you seen the size of some of our classmates? And I suspect that Timothy Benson may already be shaving. So when school began, I believed that to survive I must forge new alliances.”
I was gripped by a feeling of cold dread. “You were going to leave me behind?”
“No. I mean . . . How can I say? Per’aps there was a moment . . .” He sighed. “I panicked. I see that now. Can you forgive me?”
“Always,” I answered. I couldn’t imagine a universe in which Serge and I weren’t best friends.
We made our way along the back alleys of the school, as Cara had shown us, avoiding patrols, sidestepping the sweep of surveillance cameras. The sue-dunham were too busy with final invasion preparations to notice us slipping through the ship.
The Wraith bounded ahead, coming to a halt outside a door. He raised his nose, sniffed, and then squeaked excitedly. I’d heard enough Mole to understand: he had tracked down our human worm.
“He’s in the faculty room,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
“It is forbidden,” whispered Serge. “Students are not allowed in the faculty room under any circumstances. It is the unbreakable rule.”
“Like the Prime Directive in Star Trek,” I said.
“Precisely,” said Serge.
“Which Captain Kirk is always breaking,” I reminded him. I eased the door open and slipped inside.
My breath caught in my throat. The faculty room was a palace of marble a
nd gold, the warm air filled with heady aromas. A great crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, casting glossy light across the floor, which twinkled with a coating of what looked like crushed diamonds. Plump sofas made from the hides of endangered animals herded around the watering hole of a gently splashing fountain. I had to shield my eyes from the dazzling display. I breathed in the exotic scents of ambergris and camphor (I only knew what they were because of two candles on a coffee table labeled “Ambergris” and “Camphor,” from the JCPenney Exotic line).
“So it is true,” breathed Serge.
There had always been rumors among the students about the unparalleled luxury of the faculty room. Now we were seeing it for ourselves.
I lowered my hand from my squinting eyes. Before me sat Christopher Talbot, stretched out on a plush leather armchair with a half-eaten box of chocolates. He wore a fluffy white bathrobe, his hair wrapped turban-style in a towel. He held a paperback novel in one hand, while the other was halfway to his open mouth, an orange cream clutched between his fingers. He froze in surprise.
With an electric hum, the chair inclined to an upright position. “Stay back! I warn you,” he said, one chocolaty finger extending toward a control panel set into the arm of the chair. “I only have to push this button and a squad of guards will . . . Oh no, wait, not this button. That’s the one for the massage. This button summons the guards.”
“Push it,” I said. He looked surprised. “But if you do, you’ll never know what I was about to offer you.”
He sneered. “What could you possibly offer me? Look around you. I have everything I want here. Big floating TV, mini-fridge, chair that goes up and down, the new iPhone. I’m on top of the world.”
“But what about the world? Don’t you care about what happens to the rest of us? What about your nephew? Your sister?”
“We’re not close.”
“Your mom and dad?”
He shook his head. “They passed away. A long time ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was, truly. “But is this what they’d have wanted for you?”
“I know what you’re doing, Luke. Trying to appeal to my better nature. Only problem is, I don’t have one. Not anymore. Sure, when I was your age, all I wanted was to save the world. But then the world treated me badly. Now it’s my turn.” He sighed and stared into the distance. “You grow up hoping you’ll become someone great, someone special. But then one day you look around at your empty comic book store and your Single-Serving Lean Cuisine Sesame Chicken, and you realize it isn’t going to happen. But then, what’s this—one last chance? And yes, placing all your hopes and aspirations into a shady deal with an alien race intent on world domination wouldn’t be your first choice. But it’s all you’ve got.” His finger hovered over the controls. “Now, which was the guard button again?”
“What if this isn’t your last chance?” I said. “What if—”
“Two last chances?” He scoffed. “Nobody gets two.”
“He is, of course, correct,” said Serge. “Technically it would move the existing last chance to the position of second-to-last chance. So then this would be the actual last chance.”
“Forget it,” said Christopher Talbot flatly. “There is nothing you can say to change my mind.”
I was gambling that I could say exactly that. This wasn’t like betting on cards with gummy bears; the fate of the entire human race rested on the next words out of my mouth. I took a deep breath.
“I have a time machine.”
His finger drew back from the button. “No, you don’t. That’s ridiculous. What are you talking about?”
“I can take you back. To that time when you dreamed of becoming a superhero, when it was still a possibility. The time machine, it’s in here.” I showed him my clenched fist. “Give me your hand.” I took a step closer.
He hesitated. Then curiosity got the better of him and slowly he reached out. I held out my fist and opened my fingers. There was a clinking sound as my cuff links fell into his palm.
Of course, I didn’t have an actual time machine. But if I had judged Christopher Talbot correctly, these would have a similar effect. If I could become him, I was betting I could take him back to a time when he was like me.
The light from the chandelier rolled off their gleaming surfaces as he read the inscription. “Here I come.” His voice wobbled. “To save the day.” He looked up at me with a face full of confusion. And a glimmer of hope. On the outside he was still a tired, middle-aged man, but in his eyes I glimpsed the spark of the eleven-year-old boy he’d once been.
I took his hand and gently closed his fingers around the cuff links.
“Last chance.”
Showtime!
“First wave, commence launch in ten Earth minutes,” boomed the Overlord’s voice over the school’s public address system. “And remember, I want to see impressive aerial formations, wanton destruction, and lots of screaming earthlings. OK, troops—it’s showtime!”
The mother ship was a hive of activity. Or maybe that should be a nest. Or perhaps an underwater cave. I had yet to observe any of the sue-dunham in their true hideous form, so it was hard to say whether they were insect-, bird-, or octopus-based. Whatever they were, they were really busy, so it was quite easy for us to keep out of their way and spy on their preparations.
Of course, I’d seen plenty of aliens invade Earth in films and comics. But until you’ve been on board a mother ship in the run-up to zero hour, you have no idea of the amount of work that goes into it. Mobilizing all those assault ships and ground troops and hover-tanks takes attention to detail and lots of patience. The line for the bathroom alone stretched three times around the flight deck.
I couldn’t help but notice that the aliens had decided to keep their current human skin. Even they couldn’t come up with a form scarier than Miss Dunham. Hundreds of gym teachers in battle armor and flight suits mustered in the assembly hall for their final orders. When they hit our town, the real Miss Dunham was in for quite a shock.
“You’re making the right choice,” I whispered to Christopher Talbot as we snuck past a guard post. “The aliens would have double-crossed you. You’d never get what they promised. All they care about are viewing figures; they’re planning to turn all of us into mindless TV-watching zombies.”
“I know,” he said, as we shuffled around the corner. “As well as Bavaria, they offered me a spin-off show.” He snagged the sleeve of his bathrobe on a tack stuck to a bulletin board. There hadn’t been time for him to change into regular clothes, but he had insisted on blow-drying his hair.
We dropped down outside the entrance to the gym. As arranged, the others were waiting for us. However much I tried, I couldn’t shake my mistrust of Christopher Talbot. I was hoping Zack had recovered enough to take over the role of savior of mankind.
My brother leaned against the bulkhead, letting out small moans, a cold compress laid across his feverish forehead.
My disappointment must have been obvious, because Cara said, “Actually, I think he’s feeling a bit better.”
I turned to Zack. “Are you?” If he was, then maybe his superpowers were coming back. I had to be sure. “I’m thinking of a number. Can you use your telepathic powers to tell me what it is?”
He narrowed his eyes in concentration. And then suddenly widened them. “Armadillo!”
Oh well. We still had Christopher Talbot. The rest of the S.C.A.R.F. team surrounded him with suspicious expressions.
“What are you looking at?” he said, backing away. “I’m on your side.” His voice dropped to a mumble. “Again.”
Lara folded her arms and scowled. “Sure, you’re with us—until you get a better offer.”
He looked hurt, which was pretty funny, given that he flip-flopped more than a pair of strappy beach shoes.
“How’s the teleport situation?” I quizzed Cara.
“Taken care of,” she replied with a smile, stepping aside from the gym’s open doorway. Inside I could see three sue-dunham tied up with jump ropes next to the pommel horse. “Our escape route is ready.”
We didn’t need it yet. I crossed my fingers and hoped there’d be an Earth to teleport back to.
The ship-wide address system shook once more. “Commence invasion in five Earth minutes,” announced the Overlord.
“That’s our cue,” I said, setting the timer on my phone for five minutes. “This way.” We turned from the gym and set off toward our key objective. As we rounded the final corner, we skidded to a stop. Between us and our destination stood a familiar figure.
“It’s . . .” began Lara.
“The Cara-borg,” I breathed.
Zack looked even more confused than usual. He shifted his gaze from the Cara-borg to the real Cara and back again. His voice quavered as the terrible realization hit him like a smacker on the lips, and in a quiet voice he said, “I kissed an evil robot.”
The Cara-borg brushed a strand of hair out of her face and smiled. “Nobody’s perfect.”
The real Cara stepped forward, slipped her bow from her back, and nocked an arrow. “She’s mine.”
“Hello, Cara,” said the Cara-borg. “I have enjoyed living your life. I believe the earthling expression is ‘walking in your shoes.’ Which I have done too. I particularly like those wedge heels you think your mom doesn’t know about. Though, small confession—I did rip that denim skirt of yours.”
The real Cara tightened her bow. “The one from H&M or the one from Urban Outfitters? Y’know what, doesn’t matter. So, who else have you been kissing?”
“Oh, you mean that hunky boyfriend of yours?” The Cara-borg made a face. “Not my type.”
The real Cara gave an offended gasp. “What do you mean? He’s handsome and gentle and smart and very tall.”
“People can be too tall,” said Zack.
The Cara-borg’s hand blurred as she produced a silver remote control, a more elegant version of the clunky style I’d seen in the hands of the aliens. Weapons drawn, the two Caras began to circle one another.
My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord Page 16