Attack of the BULLIES

by Michael Buckley

  “Dr. Julian! You don’t have to do this!” she cried over the howling wind. She wasn’t even sure the man could hear her, but it never hurt to use reason before you started using your fists. “You can give me the vial and no one has to get hurt.”

  Dr. Julian wheeled around, a vial of bright red liquid in his hand. “Kid, you need to leave me alone. You don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “I know what you’ve created, and I know you plan to give it to someone who will use it to take the world hostage. I can’t let you do that!”

  Dr. Julian snarled and kept running along the top of the moving train. Ruby raced after him the best she could. At a slight bend in the track, the scientist nearly fell off.

  “Dr. Julian!” Ruby cried. If he fell, his vial would fall. The scientists back at the Playground told her that would be disastrous. The superlaxative would seep into the water supply, flow into rivers and oceans, and the world would turn into one big toilet.

  Ruby reached the end of her car and took a wild leap, landing hard on the next car. Then she continued to run after the scientist. He had a head start, but she was faster and more agile, and soon she had cut his lead in half. “You have to stop, Dr. Julian. You know this is wrong.”

  Julian stopped and faced her. “Kid, my work is for sale to the highest bidder! I can’t stop someone from using what I create to do bad things.”

  Ruby’s hands began to swell—a clear sign that Julian was lying. There was more to the scientist’s claim. A tickle in her armpit told her that Dr. Julian was being forced against his will.

  “Someone has threatened you,” Ruby shouted.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Now get lost before we both get killed.”

  “What did they say they’d do to you?”

  Julian scowled.

  Suddenly, Ruby’s eyes were swelling, which could only mean one thing: Danger. “Duck!” she shouted with no time to spare. She fell to her belly as the train plunged into a tunnel. She could feel the stone ceiling scraping against her coat, and she prayed that Dr. Julian had been able to heed her warning. When they cleared the tunnel, she got to her feet. The scientist had made it, too.

  “Who is making you do this?” she continued.

  The words seemed to pain the man. “She’s … I don’t know what her name is, really. She wears a mask with a skull on it.”

  Ruby felt the air squeeze out of her body. “Ms. Holiday.”

  “She threatened my family.”

  “We can protect them,” Ruby said, taking a tentative step forward. “I know I look like a meddling kid who is in over her head, but I work with some very powerful people. We can move you and your family to a place she will never find you. You can start over without fear.”

  Dr. Julian looked down at his vial and then back at her, clearly struggling with the decision. Ruby sympathized and wondered what she would do in the same situation: put her trust in some kid on top of a speeding train, or risk her family’s lives?

  “All right, kid,” he said as he stretched out his arm to hand her the vial.

  Ruby let out a deep breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “You’re doing the right thing,” she said. With her fingertips on the vial, she was suddenly overcome by a tremendous sneezing fit. The vial slipped and fell onto the top of the train. Luckily, it didn’t break, but it bounced and skidded toward the far end of the car.

  “Hey, Pufferfish, everything OK?” a voice crackled in her head.

  Ruby scowled. The sneeze wasn’t an allergic reaction or a touch of the flu but what happened when a tiny communication link implanted in Ruby’s nose was activated. It was supposed to keep her in close contact with her team members, but as she watched the vial disappear from view, she wished she could reach up her nostril and yank it out. Especially since she knew who was on the other end—Heathcliff Hodges.

  “Pufferfish? Can you read me?”

  Ruby growled. “You’re not supposed to be on the com-link, Heathcliff!”

  “I wanted to help. Have you caught Dr. Diarrhea yet? Where are you? It sounds loud—”

  Ruby squeezed her nose to deactivate the link and chased after the bouncing vial. It slid across the metal roof, threatening to shatter and explode at any second. She lunged face-first, feeling the slick glass in her hands once more, only to lose it again when another sneeze took hold. Ruby watched the vial hop across the gap to the next car.

  “Hey, is everything OK? I think we got disconnected,” Heathcliff said over the link. “When you get back, we should run a diagnostic on your nostril implant.”

  “HEATHCLIFF! If you don’t mind, I’m trying to save the world,” she said, hauling herself to her feet and disconnecting the com-link. Her eyes again on the vial, she dashed ahead, doing her best to keep her balance with the ever-changing shaking of the train. She was just about to reach down and scoop up the deadly potion again when …

  “AHHH-CHOOO!”

  Her right foot kicked the vial across the gap, sending it onto the next car.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” she shouted as her fingers tingled. She was allergic to bad timing and even more sensitive to annoying people.

  “Um, I was thinking that maybe I could send a message to the conductor to stop the train. Would that help?”

  “I’ve got it covered!” Ruby bellowed. “And this would be over if you would just leave me alone!”

  “Oh,” Heathcliff said.

  She ignored the hurt in his voice. She knew he was just trying to help, but she didn’t have time for him. She squeezed her nose again to shut him out and leaped across the gap. Unfortunately, this landing was not as lucky as the previous ones. Her feet touched down on a patch of black ice that sent her slipping and tumbling over the side of the car. She survived only by snatching a metal railing on the roof with one hand and grabbing the vial out of the air with the other. Strong gusts sent her crashing into the side of the train as she struggled to pull herself back up with one arm. She imagined the bewildered passengers gaping at her through the windows and hoped they would be smart enough to look away before she fell.

  Which was exactly what was going to happen. She just didn’t have the upper-body strength to hold on for much longer. Death was inevitable, but she had to focus on the vial. When she fell, it would fall, too, which meant it would shatter and soak into the soil.

  She refused to be the cause of the world falling apart. There was only one way to stop it. She had to swallow the formula.

  She had no idea what the glowing red chemical would do to her body. If a drop could take out a city, what would a whole vial do to her insides? The pain would be staggering, but it would only last a brief moment, and then she would fall and it would all be over. It was the only way to save the world. Dying was part of the deal when she agreed to be a secret agent.

  She slipped the little glass tube into her mouth and ground her teeth into the cap in order to yank it off. But she was too late. The train went around a curve, and she was thrown against the car. The force was so strong that her grip was wrenched free and she fell.

  But she didn’t hit the ground. There was another hand wrapped around her jacket hood, pulling her to safety. She lay on her back, breathing heavily, with the vial still safe—and sealed—between her teeth. In the cold winter air, her savior hovered over her.

  “You can’t die on me, kid,” Dr. Julian said over the wind. “You’ve got to protect my family.”

  Ruby nodded and removed the vial from her mouth. She squeezed her nose to reactivate the link to the Playground.

  “Heathcliff, are you there? I have something for you to do,” she said.

  “Really? Oh, boy!” Heathcliff cried.

  Ruby set her mouth in a determined expression. “I want Dr. Julian’s wife and children taken into protective custody, and I want it done five minutes ago. You tell our people that no one goes home until the Julian family’s in a safe house. This is top priority.”

>   Heathcliff squealed with delight. “I’m on it. You can count on me!”

  Dr. Julian sat down beside her, lifted the collar on his overcoat, and stared off into the beautiful green fields of northern England, which were slowly becoming more visible in the dawn light.

  “So the world owes its continued existence to an eleven-year-old girl?” Dr. Julian asked.

  “Actually, I’m twelve,” Ruby replied. “And don’t worry, Doctor. They only send me when James Bond can’t take the job.”

  “And how often is that?”

  Ruby sighed and turned to Dr. Julian. “Lately it’s been every day.”

  When you are a supervillain, it is very hard to get respect from the rest of the criminal community if you happen to be cute, and unfortunately, Miss Information was terribly, depressingly adorable. She had big blue eyes, a button nose, tanned skin, and golden hair. She looked like a movie star. Her peers, on the other hand, were covered in ugly scars and had terribly twisted metallic limbs. Some of them had laser eyes or had been disfigured by chemical spills. Professor Zydeco had an alligator head and an accordion frozen in his chest cavity. Miss Information would have loved that! But no luck—she was a beauty. So she was forced to wear a mask that covered her whole head.

  The mask had drawbacks.

  First, it was very difficult to eat a candy apple while wearing it.

  Second, it gave her terrible hat-head.

  Third, whenever she called a customer service number and got an automated voice system, it never understood what she was saying. NEVER! She could shout over and over again, but the voice would always say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that. Let’s try again.”

  But the mask did have two major pluses. The first was that it scared the living daylights out of everyone who saw it. She’d witnessed people wet their pants or even faint when they met her. That was cool. The second was that she didn’t have to look at herself when she wore it. Her face, as lovely as it was, brought on a wave of confusing memories—or were they hallucinations? She couldn’t be sure sometimes. It seemed as if she had lived several lives all crammed into one. Was the handsome man with the amazing hair real? Who were the superpowered children that appeared in her dreams? Why did she sometimes ache to wear a cardigan sweater? Why did she have to resist the urge to go into libraries and reshelve books? What was the Dewey decimal system? Why was she always “shushing” people? The mask quieted all of her questions. It made her feel sane.

  “I bet they’re looking for us, darling,” she said. She turned to her boyfriend, who sat in a chair in the corner of her office. He was wearing a tuxedo and holding a white cane, and might have looked very dapper if he wasn’t a scarecrow with a head made from a stuffed burlap sack. Miss Information had painted a smiley face on the sack and hung a sign from his neck that read ALEX.

  She planted a kiss on the scarecrow’s burlap face, then hoisted him over her shoulder. Every step showered loose straw behind her.

  She carried Alex into an enormous domed room. The ceiling, which was held aloft by towering pillars, was decorated with intricate ceramic mosaics dedicated to the four branches of evil: raving madmen, world conquerors, firebrand pyromaniacs, and fast-food workers. Below was a room as long and wide as a football field. Hundreds of tables and workstations filled the space, and at each station busy scientists were working feverishly on bizarre inventions: sun-exploding missiles, laser-guided death rays, armies of evil robotic beavers, tidal-wave machines, devices to awaken prehistoric monsters … It was like … a playground of evil! Every time Miss Information entered the room, she couldn’t help but beam with pride. Every detail was built according to her vision—and to think it had all come to her in a dream.

  “Miss Information! We’ve had a breakthrough!”

  One of her scientists hobbled across the vast room. She didn’t know any of their names, but this one had a ball and chain attached to his leg, which meant he had tried to escape at some point. Miss Information hated when the scientists tried to escape. It really hurt her feelings.

  “Oh, yes?” she said. “Which one?”

  The scientist removed a folded piece of paper from his pocket and spread it out on a nearby table. It showed a crude drawing of a big circle. Beneath it in neat print were the words talking, flying, and robotic ball.

  “Finally!” Miss Information cried. “What took so long?”

  The scientist gulped nervously. “We apologize for the delay, but as Dr. Silver remarked, the design was a little vague.”

  “Vague? Everything you needed to know is right here on this paper. Where is this Dr. Silver?”

  “You had him placed in a cage full of hungry tigers.”

  “Oh, that Dr. Silver! Well, that’ll teach him to be a negative Nelly!”

  “Actually, the tigers ate him.”

  “And now you’re being a negative Nelly!” she said, huffing. “Why can’t you guys be happy? I hired you to work on supercool ideas. This is a dream job for a scientist.”

  “Um, actually, you kidnapped all of us and force us to work with threats and … tigers.”

  “Listen, I’ve never run a worldwide criminal enterprise before, so you guys are going to have to cut me some slack! There’re going to be some growing pains until I figure it all out. Now, you said you had something to show me?”

  He reached into his lab coat and pulled out a silver ball the size of a large tomato. He set it in her hands and pushed a button on its surface. The ball hummed to life. Like magic, it spun like a top and hovered in midair. Purple lights beamed from tiny holes and illuminated the walls and ceiling.

  Miss Information turned to her straw boyfriend, who sat in a chair shedding more of his innards onto the floor. “Sweetums! It works.”

  She turned back to the orb, dazzled by its lights and sounds. “Happy birthday, Benjy!”

  A deep, emotionless voice came from within the orb. “Who is Benjy?”

  “You are, silly.” She giggled. “How do you feel?”

  “I do not have hands, so I cannot feel anything.”

  “No, I don’t mean that literally,” she replied. “I’m asking about what you are experiencing.”

  “I do not experience anything. I log and save what I perceive.”

  Miss Information frowned and turned to the scientist. “I’m unhappy, Mr. Scientisty-man. I thought Benjy would have more sass.”

  “Sass?”

  “You know—personality. I thought he’d be snarky,” she said. “This wasn’t how I imagined the robot at all. He needs to have opinions and a sense of humor. This thing is totally boring. No offense, Benjy.”

  “I cannot be offended. I am not programmed with emotions.”

  “See?” she exclaimed. “Lame!”

  “He’s a robot, ma’am, with limited artificial intelligence. What you’re asking for is simply not possible,” the scientist said, his voice shaking.

  Miss Information eyed the man disapprovingly. Then she shouted over the din of experiments and chatter, “Does anyone know when the tigers eat lun—”

  “But we can fix him!” the scientist cried.

  Miss Information turned to her stuffed beau. “Really?” she said as if she were having a conversation. “But I wanted him to be funny. Well, if you think so.”

  With a pout in her voice she turned back to the scientist. “Let’s leave Benjy the way he is.” She leaned in to whisper in the terrified man’s ear. “I think Alex is a little jealous about the competition for my attention. You should get to work on the next part of my plan.”

  The scientist nodded and forced a smile on his face. “The machine that gives children superpowers?” he whispered back.

  “Yes. You got my designs, correct?”

  “I have the crayon drawing of the chair that you drew,” he said. “So, yes, I got your designs.”

  “Well, chop-chop,” Miss Information said, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “Time’s a-wastin’!”

  The scientist darted off as fast as he c
ould with a ball chained to his leg.

  “Benjy, welcome to the team. This is Alex, my boyfriend,” Miss Information said, gesturing to the straw man. “He’s a master spy and an international man of danger.”

  “That is a scarecrow,” Benjy said matter-of-factly.

  Miss Information seized the stuffed man and gave him a hug. “Oh, silly, there must be something wrong with your visual sensors.”

  “My sensors are functioning within—”

  “No time for chitchat right now, Benjy. I want to show you our evil headquarters.”

  Miss Information hoisted the scarecrow onto her back and led the orb through her facility. They passed all manner of space-age vehicles: cars that drove underwater, flying motorcycles, helicopters that ran on maple syrup, mini submarines, and many more. In another room they found weapons: submachine guns, laser pistols, rocket launchers, matter vaporizers—even a flamethrower.

  “Look at all my toys, Benjy. We have the most advanced computer and surveillance tech in the world and a full-time staff dedicated to creating one doomsday device after another. And the break room has a juicer! Best of all, we’re hidden several stories below a middle school.”

  Benjy spun around and beeped. “Yes, my internal GPS pinpoints our location as beneath the Margreet Zelle Detention Center for the Incorrigible.”

  “You are correct. This school houses an army of punks, juvenile delinquents, and bad apples. It’s the biggest collection of bullies in North America. They’re going to be very helpful in my plans to take over the world.”

  The orb clicked. “May I ask a question?”

  “You betcha.”

  “Have you given any thought to the logistical complications of maintaining control over the whole world in the highly unlikely event that you succeed? For instance, how will you effectively manage a planet of over seven billion people, all of whom will be plotting to retake their freedom? How will you juggle the various economic needs of each nation? Do you plan on ruling the world with an iron fist or benevolence? Have you found a solution to the needs of poorer countries, or do you plan on subjecting everyone to slavery and destroying the industrialized world? If it is the latter, have you planned for housing, food, clean water, and access to health care? How will you handle the various religious needs of everyone you rule? How do you maintain a single currency for an extremely divergent people who all have different cultural and economic needs?”