CIA Academy of Espionage
Subterranean level B
February 13
0400 hours
I was caught completely by surprise, not so much because we had been ambushed, but because it was Warren who had engineered it. While many of my fellow classmates at spy school were incredibly capable, Warren wasn’t. It was hard for him to so much as fill up a glass of water without screwing it up. Erica seemed to be equally surprised by Warren’s sudden competence, while Mike merely seemed disappointed that our adventure had come to an end so quickly. Meanwhile, Zoe and Ashley were both livid.
“How dare you?” Zoe shouted at Warren, betrayal in her eyes. “You’re only here right now because I told you we were here!”
“You told him?” I repeated. “When?”
“I sent him a text when you showed up by the jail cells,” Zoe said through gritted teeth. “He was supposed to tell Jawa and Chip that you were here. But instead he’s turned us in.” She glared at Warren hatefully. “I thought you were my friend!”
“I tried to be,” Warren said petulantly. “But you’ve always sided with Ben. On everything. Even now that he’s turned out to be a covert assassin, you’re still siding with him instead of me! Well, now you’re going down with him too.”
The guards surrounded us. While some kept us at gunpoint, the others advanced forward to handcuff us.
“You jidiot,” Ashley hissed at Warren under her breath. “You’re not supposed to do this now.”
Warren appeared far more disturbed by this than he had by anything Zoe had said. He reared back from Ashley and looked around skittishly to see if anyone else had heard her.
And just like that, SPYDER’s plot suddenly became clear to me.
However, there was no time to share my revelation.
Five of the guards shoved me, Erica, Mike, Zoe, and Ashley up against the wall, face-first, then wrenched our hands behind our backs to cuff us. Erica was directly beside me. I started to tell her what I’d realized, but she cut me off, having something even more important to share. “In three seconds, hit the deck.”
Before I could even ask what she meant, a metal pellet the size of a half-dollar dropped from her utility belt. The moment it hit the cement floor, a cloud of smoke exploded from it and enveloped us.
I did exactly as she’d ordered, yanking my hands free from the startled guard behind me and dropping to the floor myself.
From the side of me where Erica was came the distinct sound of another guard getting punched someplace very painful. Then I had the sense of something like a leg whipping quickly through the space over my head, followed by the sound of the guard who’d been behind me getting kicked hard somewhere even more painful.
If I hadn’t hit the deck as Erica had ordered, she would have just sent me to the hospital.
From my other side, where Ashley had been, I heard the sounds of yet another guard being pummeled.
Meanwhile, the guards with the guns were somewhere farther away in the cloud. “Stand down!” one of them yelled, though he sounded far more worried than authoritative. “If you don’t, we will have to . . . Aaugh!” His scream of surprise turned to one of pain, then abruptly cut off, as though he’d suddenly been rendered unconscious.
I remained where I was, curled in a ball on the concrete floor. I knew it wasn’t very chivalrous of me to let Erica and Ashley handle all the fighting, but then, a big part of being a good spy was playing to your strengths. I was good at solving problems, doing complex calculations, and working out what SPYDER was up to, but I was pathetic at fighting—while Erica and Ashley were astoundingly good at it. If I tried to help, I’d only get in the way and would most likely end up unconscious, which wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
In addition to the various thumps, punches, and yelps of pain around me, I could also hear Warren growing more and more panicked. “Erica?” he asked worriedly. “What are you doing? Erica . . . ?” Then I heard him fleeing through the cloud of smoke. Or trying to flee. There was a distinct thud, followed by a yelp, as he blindly ran into a wall.
An alarm went off. Warren or one of the guards must have triggered it. A shrill whooping echoed through the tunnels—and most likely, the entire campus above us as well.
The smoke began to dissipate after only a few seconds, but that was all Erica and Ashley had needed. I found myself lying on the floor surrounded by the bodies of guards who were either unconscious or in too much pain to stand. Erica emerged from the cloud, grabbed me by the shoulder, and hoisted me to my feet.
Another guard sailed out of the smoke nearby, crashed into the wall, and collapsed into a whimpering lump. I expected Ashley to follow him from the cloud—but to my surprise, it was Zoe who appeared, revealing herself as the one who’d taken the guy out. She noticed the shock on my face and said, “I’ve been practicing.”
Mike and Ashley emerged behind her. Ashley had an ear-to-ear grin, as though she’d been enjoying herself. Mike was agog with amazement. He leaned close to me and whispered, “The girls here are so much cooler than the ones back in regular middle school.”
As the final wisps of smoke melted away, I cased the tunnel. All the guards were still there, crumpled on the floor in various pained states, but Warren had vanished. The cement corridor was too long for him to have run out of, so he’d obviously put his camouflage skills to work, blending in somewhere around us.
“Anyone see Warren?” I asked.
“Forget him,” Erica said. “We have to move. More guards are coming.”
“We can’t leave him,” I told her. “He’s . . .”
But Erica didn’t give me the time to explain. Instead, she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down the hall. “More guards are coming now,” she clarified.
Sure enough, the sound of more guards approaching echoed from the end of the corridor. A lot more guards.
Ashley, Mike, and Zoe followed us as we fled. In the distance behind us, I heard the guards yell, “Stop or we’ll shoot!”
We didn’t stop. So they shot. Erica led us around a corner right as the sound of gunfire erupted. Hundreds of rubber bullets zinged past where we’d just been. They wouldn’t have killed us, but they would have hurt us badly enough to slow even Erica down.
We ended up in another long corridor. I thought it might have led back toward the far end of campus, where Erica and I had first entered the complex, but I couldn’t really tell. Another set of guards was coming down it in the distance, blocking that route of escape.
“Freeze!” they yelled.
“Nuts,” Erica said, then suddenly yanked me through a door to my left. Mike, Zoe, and Ashley plunged through it after us.
A staircase spiraled upward. It wasn’t a very well-used stairwell, like some of the other entrances to the tunnel complex. Instead, it was old and dusty and looked like everyone but Erica had forgotten it even existed.
“Zoe, can you call Chip or Jawa?” I panted as we raced up the stairs. “Tell them to be on the lookout for Warren.”
“Why are you so concerned about Warren all of a sudden?” Zoe asked. “The weasel tried to have us arrested!”
“He’s working for SPYDER,” I said.
Below me on the stairs, I heard the sound of Zoe stumbling in surprise. “Warren?” she gasped. “No way.”
Ashley burst into laughter. “You didn’t know? That little schmerk really snowed you good!”
I glanced upward at Erica to see what her reaction was, but couldn’t deduce anything. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it.
The top of the staircase dead-ended at a cement wall with a bolting mechanism embedded in it. Erica flipped the bolt and the wall suddenly became a door, swinging open into the boys’ locker room in the school gymnasium. There were ten lockers on the opposite side of it, one of which was my own. I had been using it for a year without having the slightest idea there was a hidden door behind it.
Unfortunately, the gym was in the dead center of campus, meaning we had a long way to go to get to safety.
The campus guards entered the stairwell below us and began pounding up it. We swung the secret door closed behind us, wedged a bench against it to jam it shut, and fled the gym.
As I’d suspected, the alarms were ringing all over campus. The lights in all the school buildings had come on, indicating that everyone was now awake. We could hear students and faculty forming ranks near the dormitory, grabbing weapons inside the armory, and closing in on us from almost every direction. Flashlight beams sliced through the darkness outside, searching for us.
We ran the only way we could: south, toward the wooded section of campus.
Our route took us straight through the obstacle course.
We couldn’t circumvent it, the way Mike had done the morning before. It was too big, and our pursuers seemed to be closing in around it. Our only hope was to make it through the course as fast as possible.
We didn’t bother crawling through the mud. It had frozen solid anyhow. The paint guns were still set up to blast us if we triggered them, but at the moment we had far more pressing problems. So we ran, skidding and sliding on the frozen muck, while paintballs whizzed past us—and occasionally pegged us as well. My brand-new, awesomely sleek black outfit was quickly splattered blue and red.
“You’re sure about Warren?” Zoe asked me. She had a wounded look in her big brown eyes.
“Yes.” I winced as a paintball clipped my shoulder. “He’s the one who planted the bomb on me. I thought some SPYDER agent had done it on the subway, but I didn’t wear my jacket when we ran this course yesterday; I had my gym clothes on instead. My jacket was in my locker. Warren had plenty of time to plant the bomb after he washed out and got sent back to start over.”
“But plenty of other people had the opportunity to plant a bomb then too,” Zoe protested. “How are you so sure it was Warren?”
“For starters, he was with us in the library right before I got activated the other day.” I ducked as a flurry of paintballs whistled over my head. “That’s when he put something on my jacket to attract the dogs at the White House. Erica said it might have been meat—or a trace of bomb residue. That way, when he put an actual bomb in my jacket the next day, the Secret Service thought the dogs were making a mistake.”
“Still,” Zoe said, “there were other people in the library too. . . .”
“But Warren’s the only one in cahoots with Ashley,” I said. Then I turned to Ashley herself. “How long has he been on your side? Since I was in evil spy school?”
“No,” she replied, seeming to enjoy how much this was upsetting Zoe. “But we already had him pegged as a strong candidate to recruit back then. So our guys went to work on him right after you blew up our headquarters. . . . Oof!” She gasped as a paintball nailed her in the thigh.
Zoe flinched as another paintball clipped her in the elbow, then asked me, “How’d you know?”
“Because of Ashley’s reaction when Warren surprised us just now. She obviously knew the plan already. Warren must have gotten word to her somehow. But he showed up too early. I’m guessing he was supposed to wait until after Ashley was free to capture us.”
“You think?” Ashley asked sarcastically. “That jidiot nearly got me arrested all over again.”
We reached the far side of the mud patch where the climbing wall stood. Erica scaled it without breaking stride, while Ashley vaulted to the top with the agility of, well . . . a professional gymnast. Mike wasn’t much slower, but Zoe and I still struggled getting over it.
“Warren’s job wasn’t to merely plant the bomb on me,” I grunted, straining to climb the wall. “He was also going to take the credit for capturing me—and you—and everyone else. SPYDER suspected I might try to return to talk to Ashley, so they must have alerted him to be on the lookout for me. . . .”
“They did,” Zoe said suddenly. “Warren was the one who suggested we stake out the jail. And he insisted I notify him if you showed up. I thought he was just looking out for you.”
“No,” I said. “He was looking out for SPYDER.”
A flashlight beam caught me as I reached the top of the wall.
“There they are!” Professor Simon shouted.
Zoe and I dropped over the wall. A second later, a hailstorm of rubber bullets rattled against the other side. It sounded like every student and faculty member had unloaded upon us at once.
Ahead of us, Erica, Ashley, and Mike were already scrambling across the balance beam over the pit of water—which was now a pit of ice. Luckily, the grease that had covered the beam in the daytime had frozen as well, so running across it was significantly easier now. It wasn’t easy—as we watched, Mike almost lost his balance and tumbled off the beam—but when people were coming to arrest and/or shoot you, it was always nice when the straightest route to retreat through wasn’t as slippery as a bucket of eel guts.
Zoe and I ran after the others. “Think about it,” I said. “Warren sets me up as the assassin. Then he catches me and turns me over to the CIA. He commits the crime and solves the case, which makes him look less like the assassin that he actually is—and more like the hero, which he isn’t.”
“But that doesn’t work if you can prove what he did.”
“That’s why SPYDER wants to take care of me before I get the chance.”
“You mean . . . kill you?”
“They already tried to blow me up with the president. I don’t think they like me very much.”
“I just can’t believe Warren planted the bomb on you.” Zoe looked queasy as we reached the far end of the beam and followed the others down the winding wooded path; the idea that Warren had turned traitor seemed to be taking a toll on her. “I can’t believe he set us up like this. Why would he turn against us?”
I didn’t answer—because I didn’t really know the answer. All I could think of was, Warren has always been a pinhead. But before I could say it, Mike piped up.
“Warren didn’t turn against us,” he said. “He turned against Ben.”
“I don’t understand,” Zoe said.
“You don’t?” Ashley chided. “I thought you guys were supposed to be a bunch of geniuses here!”
“Er . . . ,” Mike said, sounding uncomfortable, “Warren has a crush on you, Zoe.”
“He does?” Zoe asked, aghast.
“And . . . ,” Mike went on, sounding even more uncomfortable, “Zoe has a crush on you, Ben.”
“What?” I asked, stunned. I had just been thinking that Zoe was rather unobservant for never picking up on the fact that Warren liked her—and I’d apparently done the exact same thing. I turned to Zoe, who quickly averted her eyes in embarrassment, which confirmed that Mike was right—and nearly caused Zoe to run straight into a tree.
Now that Zoe’s crush was out in the open, a flood of memories came rushing back that I probably should have picked up on earlier: the time when Zoe had asked me to help her study for her History of Espionage exam when she turned out to know the subject better than I did; the time when she’d asked me to kill a spider in her room even though she could clobber a man twice her size; the time on Operation Snow Bunny when I’d made an offhanded comment that I would go to Disney World with her even though I wasn’t really into her and she’d suddenly become very annoyed at me.
I wondered if I hadn’t picked up on it because I’d been too focused on Erica, or if I simply wasn’t used to girls paying attention to me. For most of my life, not a single girl had shown interest in me, and now it turned out that, not only had I missed the signals from my closest friend at spy school, but I had missed signals so obvious that they’d driven Warren to frame me for a presidential assassination.
“You guys didn’t know any of this stuff?” Ashley taunted. “Man, for a bunch of spies-in-training, your social skills stink.”
“So this whole attack on the president . . . ,” Zoe said, still trying to get her mind around it all. “It was all about getting even with Ben?”
Ashley laughed mockingly. “You jidiots actually thought it was about killing the president? You don’t understand how SPYDER works at all, do you?”
“I’m beginning to,” I said. Every time I’d gone up against SPYDER, they had used misdirection, leading me—and the rest of the CIA—to believe they were plotting one thing when they were actually plotting something else. It seemed insane that they had targeted the president merely to frame me for his assassination (although his death might have been a nice side benefit for them), and yet it also fit the pattern of how SPYDER worked. They had a bone to pick with me for thwarting them so many times. However, if they killed me directly, the CIA would immediately suspect them: Who else but SPYDER wanted me dead? So SPYDER had come up with an indirect way to kill me—and ruin my reputation as well. Even though the plot hadn’t worked as well as SPYDER had intended, they were still manipulating things to their advantage. Now my only allies at spy school—Erica, Zoe, and Mike—were also on the run from the CIA, while the one person who really worked for SPYDER—Warren—would look like the hero for catching us, leaving him free to cause further chaos and mayhem in the future.
It was all quite confounding, clever, and devious. Classic SPYDER. And yet I still had the sense that there was more to their plan. It felt like I had missed something important, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. . . .
“Oh, crud,” Mike said suddenly.
His words snapped me back to the problem at hand: We were still on the run with the entire spy school closing in on us. Our ragtag band had emerged from the narrow wooded path to find ourselves facing the final obstacle on the course:
“Freaking pendulums,” Zoe muttered.
A strong wind was blowing, swinging the massive pendulums back and forth over the balance beam. To make matters worse, they were almost impossible to see in the darkness.
Erica didn’t hesitate. She ran right onto the beam and deftly dodged the hurtling logs. Ashley followed directly behind her.
“You go next,” Mike told me, glancing back toward the woods. The flashlight beams of the CIA flickered in the trees, growing brighter as they came closer. “You’re the one they want.”
I didn’t argue. It would have only wasted time. I gathered my nerve—and made sure my shoes were tied this time. (They were.) Then I charged onto the beam, trying to focus on the pendulums around me, rather than the people pursuing us. I had the sense of something enormous flying in toward me, hesitated, and felt a pendulum swing past an inch away. Then I moved on a few more feet and did it again. And again.
I was getting the hang of this. Though I warned myself to not get cocky, to concentrate and stay alert. . . .
There was a startled cry from ahead of me.
Erica.
To my surprise, she had lost her balance. She wobbled precariously on the balance beam.
And then a pendulum clobbered her. She sailed off the beam and thudded onto the ice below.
I was so astonished, I forgot all about my own surroundings.
Which was why I didn’t notice the pendulum coming at me until it was too late.
It seemed to appear out of nowhere. I had the sickening sensation of tumbling through the air, and then I thwacked onto the ice and skidded across it like a hockey puck. I came to a stop, gasping and winded, right next to Erica. She was already scrambling to her feet.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Ashley shoved me!” Erica pointed to the gymnast and shouted, “Stop her!”
Unfortunately, Ashley had already made it to solid ground at the end of the balance beam, with a big lead on Zoe and Mike, who still had several pendulums to get past. Ashley gave us a devious smile, her perfect white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “So long, doosers!” she shouted, and raced into the darkness.
“Dorks plus losers?” Mike asked.
“Give it a rest,” Zoe told him, then screamed as a pendulum smacked her off the beam.
Erica tried to go after Ashley, but she couldn’t get any purchase on the ice. Instead of going in a straight line, she skidded around wildly on the surface.
She was still doing better than me, though. I was struggling to merely get to my feet. I almost stood, then slipped and face-planted right back on the ice.
Four dozen flashlight beams lit us all up at once, coming from every direction. The beams were blinding. We couldn’t see who was aiming them at us, only that they had us surrounded.
“Put your hands up, traitors!” someone shouted.
Erica did exactly as ordered. There was no way she could fight back against so many people from inside the pit.
I raised my hands too. So did Zoe and Mike.
I heard the sound of a weapon being fired, followed by a small grunt from Erica.
“Erica?” I called out. “Are you okay?”
“No!” she shouted back. “Some dipstick just shot me with a sedation darrrrppplthhhmmm.” She promptly sagged on the ice, unconscious.
We had been captured for good this time, by our own agency.
While Ashley Sparks, the very person we’d risked our safety to find, had escaped.