The agent held up a badge. “I’m Agent Jacobson,” he said. “Are you Raj Banerjee?”
All I could do was nod.
Then he pulled off his sunglasses and gave me a smile. “Pleasure to meet you!” He stuck out his huge hand.
It took me a minute, but I realized he wanted me to shake it. And it felt like he broke half of my finger bones when I did.
“If you’ll just follow me, I think some explanations are in order,” he said.
I gulped and followed him up the porch and into my house, where I found my parents talking to Annie.
And she was apologizing.
Annie turned to me. “I’m so sorry about all this, Raj. But once I realized that Mr. X—or Wyss-Kuzz, as he prefers to be known—really did hack into your computer to get to mine, we had to follow standard operating procedure. Which, I’m afraid, meant raiding your house.”
While she went on explaining, I noticed that Klawde was sitting right next to her. He had a smug look on his face. Wasn’t he at all worried about this?
“Now are there any questions you’d like to ask me, Raj?” Annie said.
“Well, um,” I said, scratching my head. “Do you have any idea who this Wyss-Kuzz really is?”
“Me,” Klawde said, “ow.”
“I’m afraid we don’t,” Annie said, reaching down to pet him. “But whoever he is, he has almost unlimited computing and programming power. We could be dealing with a truly malevolent force.”
Klawde began to purr and rub against Annie’s leg.
“Wow, an evil genius using our computers?” Dad said. “That is so cool! I’ve never been so close to an evil genius before.”
“But what was he trying to do?” my mom asked.
“Wyss-Kuzz—sorry, that name is ridiculous—secretly bought a network of satellites and uploaded dozens of encrypted programs to their onboard computers. These programs were so sophisticated we don’t understand them yet. But we do know that they were designed to alter the waves that the satellites were transmitting.”
“Fascinating!” Mom said. “And how did you connect the scheme to this Wyss-Kuzz character?”
“The satellites cost a billion dollars apiece, and the purchase was made entirely in KitKoin,” Annie said. “The only person with access to that much of the cybercurrency was whoever created it.”
The agent who had brought me inside interrupted us. “Mr. and Mrs. Banerjee, may I have your handheld devices?”
“You mean our iPads?” Dad said.
“I mean all of your devices, sir,” he said.
Annie explained that nearly anything electronic we owned could have been hacked into, and that Wyss-Kuzz might have left clues to his identity on them.
My dad looked horrified. “Even my phone?” he said. “You can’t mean my phone! And wait—not the TV?”
“It’s already gone, sir.”
“But why?” Dad said. “It’s just a poor, innocent television!”
“It’s also a networked computing device.”
“Me-ow,” Klawde said. “Me-ow, me-ow!” Then he rubbed up against Dad’s leg.
Dad looked down at him in dismay. “And on top of everything, there’s something wrong with Klawde.”
“What do you mean?” Annie asked. “He looks like a normal, happy house cat to me.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Dad said.
CHAPTER 48
As the ogres continued to speak, it became apparent that the agent-ogre and the rest of the Furless Brainless Idiots would not imprison any of my Humans. This was, I suppose, a positive development.
On the other hand, it was disappointing in the extreme to be deprived of my satellites. But as the great Si-Uh-Meez himself once said, A planet too easily conquered is not worth conquering at all.
I still did possess a vast fortune. And as long as I was the wealthiest being on the planet, I would also be the most powerful.
So, in truth, I had already conquered Earth.
Purr.
Then the agent-ogre mentioned something that concerned me.
“Because of what has happened,” she said, “I expect KitKoin to experience a correction.”
A correction? What did this mean?
“Well, I hope it doesn’t correct too much,” the father-ogre said. “Because I’m counting on that KitKoin to buy me an autographed Mariano Rivera jersey!”
No longer able to maintain my friendly feline disguise, I scratched the father-ogre. He was worried about his one KitKoin? What about my millions of KitKoins!
“Aww, Klawde, you’re feeling better!” the father-ogre said, rubbing his wound.
I hurried down to my bunker command center. It was dangerous with the enemy still lurking about the fortress, but I dug up the communicator to check the LootCounter app.
I was relieved to see that KitKoin had reached an all-time high. Safe in the knowledge that I was growing richer by the second, I settled into a Contemplative Nap.
I napped many times that afternoon and into the evening, all of it gloriously uninterrupted by the boy-ogre. Sadly, such a blissful state could not last.
“Klawde? Klawde, are you down here?” he called.
As I yawned and stretched, I glanced again at the ticker app on the communicator. And I saw something I had never seen before.
1 KitKoin = 4.13 cents . . . 1 KitKoin = 4.08 cents . . . 1 KitKoin = 4.04 cents . . . 1 KitKoin = 3.97 cents . . .
Cents? What were cents?
“Ogre!” I called. “Are ‘cents’ what comes after billions in your primitive system of counting?”
“Um. No,” the boy-ogre said. “Cents are worth less than a dollar.”
I let out a yowl to pierce the upper strata of the atmosphere.
“But how could this have happened?”
“You should look at a news feed,” the boy-Human said. “Every story is about how the mysterious founder of KitKoin tried to purchase a bunch of satellites for some totally evil purpose and it sent the value crashing. And they even use your name—Wyss-Kuzz. You’re famous!”
My tail slashed in rage. As if I cared about something so insignificant as Human fame! I had lost my money—my power. Curse that agent-ogre and what she had done to me! Right now, she was surely baking celebratory snickerdoodles, gloating over this “correction.” I would show her that Wyss-Kuzz the Magnificent was not beaten yet!
CHAPTER 49
I don’t think I’d ever felt so relieved as when the whole FBI thing was over. Annie kept the raid of our house out of the news. She said it was “classified information,” which I thought was awesome. I’d never had anything top secret happen to me before.
Of course, Annie couldn’t stop people in the neighborhood from talking. Grumpy Mr. Wallace told everyone that we were being arrested for overcharging at our yard sale. And then there was school. I was just about to walk inside when I heard someone call me.
“Yo, Rat!” Scorpion said.
“Uh, yeah?”
“I heard the FBI raided your house,” he said. “When did it become illegal to be a loser?”
He looked to Newt for a laugh, but instead she said, “I actually think it’s pretty cool.”
And this time Newt wasn’t pulling my leg. And other kids thought it was cool, too. It was like when everyone at school found out that I knew the author of the Americaman comics. Brodie saved me a seat at the cafeteria, and William bought me lunch—and remembered to make it vegetarian. Meanwhile, all the other kids wouldn’t stop with the questions.
“What was it like getting raided by the FBI?”
“Did they have weapons?”
“Were there sirens?”
“No fair—I want to get raided!”
“Did you get handcuffed?”
“Were you scared?”
“Are you going to jail?”
It was kind of fun to be middle-school famous again, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Anyway, all I really cared about was that no one in my family was going to jail. And though it was a bit of a bummer not having a cat who was rich anymore, I sure wasn’t taking the KitKoin crash as hard as Miss Emmy Jo was.
She’d been back in homeroom that morning, and she was not happy about it.
“Dang that KittyKoin! I had to put my diamond-encrusted glitter-kitten sweatshirt up on eBay,” she’d said. “If any of y’all want it, it’s a bargain at seven thousand dollars.”
I felt kind of bad for her. At least I was getting to keep my light-up sneakers. And my skateboard!
CHAPTER 50
I awoke from my sunrise nap, refreshed and re-enraged. Across the street, the agent-ogre lay snug in her fortress, certain that she had vanquished me.
But today I would send her a message—a warning that she could never rest peacefully. For as long as the squirrels of this zone were under my command, Wyss-Kuzz was far from defeated!
Soon I would put my zombified pawns to work. First, they would chew through her electrical wires. Then they would infiltrate her vehicle and disable its engine. Finally, they would turn their teeth to the fortress itself, nibbling holes in its roof until it was rendered uninhabitable.
Donning the VQ helmet, I sent the Zom-Beam drone aloft and entered multi-squirrel mode, selecting every tree-dwelling rodent within range. I quickly programmed their tasks and uttered the command, “SQUIRRELS: ATTACK!”
Within moments, a legion of squirrel zombies had descended upon the she-ogre’s fortress. Oh how I loved controlling them! These fluff-tailed fools didn’t even know they were being used! One by one they began to attack.
Then something went awry.
CONNECTION LOST CONNECTION LOST CONNEC
The error message kept repeating until every single one of my squirrels had been released from the Zom-Beam’s control.
Suddenly a voice came through the headset—a voice I would know anywhere.
“Wyss-Kuzz the Vile! It has been many moonrises since we have spoken!”
Right before my eyes appeared a virtual 3-D image of he who hated me most.
Colonel Akornius Maximus!
“You!” I cried. “But how did you know?”
“We of the ShadowTail Confederacy have always kept watch over our Earthly brothers and sisters!” Colonel Akorn chittered. “Once we discovered this nefarious Zom-Beam and found out who had created it, oh, how I rejoiced in the opportunity to thwart you, you thin-tailed villain!”
“My tail is exactly the right size!” I said. “And even though you have just foiled my greatest evil scheme, I am unable to feel rage against you, because you are just SO adorable.”
Colonel Akorn let out a squeak of fury and shook a tiny paw at me.
“You will pay for such insults! And you shall never again be left in peace. You dared use my squirrel brothers to spy on the Humans? Now they shall spy on YOU! What do you have to say to that, you oversized, long-whiskered feline?”
“What do I have to say?” I asked. “That you are even cuter when you are making threats.”
He looked as if he were about to explode. And then, just as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.
This was probably for the best. There was only so much cuteness I could take right now.
CHAPTER 51
With all of our devices gone, I was forced into a life of no screen time. Steve, in particular, felt bad for me. “It’s almost like someone died,” he said.
Honestly, though, I felt freed. In fact, I was pretty sure I never wanted to play another virtual-reality game ever.
“But I thought you wanted the VQ Ultra more than anything,” Steve said.
I told him that I wanted something else more now. And after I explained what it was, he wanted it, too.
“The Astro 9000?” Cedar said when we got to her house. “You guys wanna chip in and buy the telescope I’ve been saving for—together?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “I love space and stuff. And besides, between the three of us we’ve saved enough to buy it right now.”
“And you agreed to this?” she said to Steve. “Did your brain catch Raj’s flu or something?”
Steve shrugged. “I never could decide what I wanted to do with the money anyway.”
Back at home, I found Mom walking around the house, rearranging the silverware drawer for the fifth time because her laptop was gone, and Dad sitting on the couch, staring at the wall where the TV used to be.
“Do you guys wanna go for a walk?” I asked.
My parents looked at each other like they didn’t understand what I was saying. Then they turned back to me with a smile. “Sure!” they said.
I went up to my room to grab a sweatshirt. Klawde was on the windowsill, mumbling to himself and staring at a squirrel in a tree outside. The squirrel was staring straight back. And he looked kind of angry.
I guess Klawde really wasn’t controlling them after all.
“Akorn! Who would have thought . . . ,” he went on mumbling. “And a mother-ogre! I should have known. Mother-ogres are not to be trifled with.”
“Sounds like you learned a lesson, Klawde,” I said.
I had, too. Money didn’t matter when you already had everything you needed. And I wasn’t talking about computers, phones, or VR headsets. I was talking about family and friends. “And you, Klawde.”
“Any more of your sentimental values and I’ll cough up a hairball the size of a dwarf star!” Klawde said. “Be gone, idiot Human!”
“Fine,” I said, and left to take a walk with Mom and Dad.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Although a worthless Human, Johnny Marciano has redeemed himself somewhat by chronicling the glorious adventures of Klawde, Evil Alien Warlord Cat. His lesser work concerns the pointless doings of other worthless Humans, in books such as The Witches of Benevento, The No-Good Nine, and Madeline at the White House. He currently resides on the planet New Jersey.
Emily Chenoweth is a despicable Human living in Portland, Oregon, where the foul liquid known as rain falls approximately 140 days a year. Under the top secret alias Emily Raymond, she has collaborated with James Patterson on numerous best-selling books. There are three other useless Humans in her family, and two extremely ignorant Earth cats.
MEANWHILE . . .
LOCATION: THE IMPERIAL PALACE OF LYTTYRBOKS
“I cannot believe what you have just told me. My nemesis has failed in yet another evil scheme?” Ffangg said, purring into the communicator. “The fool cannot even conquer Earth? Oh my, how Wyss-Kuzz has fallen!”
“Yes, he is truly pathetic,” Akorn agreed. “But even though I thwarted his plans, still he mocks me. That feline had better show me some respect at the next meeting of the Allied Warlords of Evil, or there will be much bloodied fur!”
“Even more than usual?” Ffangg said.
“If he calls me ‘adorable’ one more time—”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about what Wyss-Kuzz will or won’t do at our next warlord gathering,” Ffangg said. “A little birdie told me that Wyss-Kuzz is in for quite a disappointment.”
Akorn narrowed his eyes. “What little birdie?”
“Blixbit, the vicious hummingbird of Mayhemique,” Ffangg said. “He is in charge of the invites to the next meeting.”
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