Chapter 15

“Did you say Port-a-Potty?”

There was nothing special about Viewmont Elementary School. Except maybe the Rebel janitor, Earl Dodge.

It was just after one o’clock in the morning when the Rebel team got settled inside the school. Earl was wearing blue plaid pajamas, black cowboy boots, and a ten-gallon hat. He flicked a toothpick back and forth under his bristly handlebar mustache.

“Now, let me get this straight,” Earl drawled. They were all sitting, rather cramped, in the janitorial office. “You’re just gonna stroll on into a high-security laboratory and take down the most powerful man in the BEM?”

Walter nodded. “Will you help us?”

“Sheesh!” Earl said. “You fellers are daft. If I’da known we’d be raiding the Bureau, I wouldn’t have worn my pj’s.”

“We don’t need you to come with us,” Alan said. “We need you to stay here and keep the portal open so we can get back.”

“Phew,” Daisy said. “Glad it’s not me again. I didn’t do so good last time.”

“You did fine,” Spencer said to her. “It wasn’t your fault we were working with a traitor.” He shot a venomous glance over his shoulder at Dez, who stood slouched against the door frame.

“Not cool, Doofus!” Dez answered. “I’m not a traitor anymore. The BEM’s dumb. I hate those guys.”

“You really expect us to believe you?” Spencer asked.

“You know how much stuff they promised to do for me?” Dez said. He stood up straight, his lip curled in a sneer. “They lied and lied, like a million times. The BEM didn’t do jack for me! Garcia wanted to lock me up with a bunch of Rubbishes till my brain turned to mush. I’m glad he’s dead!”

Walter stood up, his arm outstretched in a reassuring manner. “We understand that you’re upset, Dez. But you’re with us now, and we’ll protect you.”

“Yeah, right.” Dez slumped against the door frame again. “You guys are no better.”

“As you can see,” Bernard said to Earl, “our team is very united.”

The cowboy janitor chuckled. “All right,” he said. “I’ll squeegee a portal for you. But don’t you gotta have somebody in Massachusetts with a squeegee too?”

“We do,” Walter said. He unclipped a squeegee from his belt and handed it to Earl. Dez had lost the squeegee he’d used at New Forest Academy, and Daisy’s was useless without it. Spencer figured that this new squeegee Walter gave to Earl must belong to a new pair.

“Agnes Maynard,” Walter continued.

“And she’s inside the BEM laboratory?” Penny asked.

The warlock shook his head. “No, but she’s as close as we can get. Agnes is a part-time janitor at a middle school only a few blocks from the entrance to the lab. She agreed to open a squeegee portal for us, but that’s all she’ll do. We’re on our own when we get there.”

“What do we know about the entrance to the lab?” asked Penny.

“All of our information comes from Agnes,” Alan answered. “She said it’s inside a construction site, fenced around with chain-link.”

“That’s all they have for defenses?” Bernard said. “I’ve been climbing chain-link fences since I was knee-high to a Thingamajunk.”

“The chain-link fence around the construction site isn’t the hard part,” Alan said, “although it may be rigged with traps, and there will probably be guards. Once inside the construction site, Agnes said the place is riddled with mines. One misstep can spring a trap loaded with Agitated Toxites. We need to make our way across the site and enter a Port-a-Potty.”

Spencer shuddered and Daisy giggled.

“I’m sorry,” Bernard said. “Did you say Port-a-Potty?”

Alan nodded, like it was the most serious thing he’d ever said. “A portable outhouse. That’s the entrance to the BEM’s secret laboratory.”

Spencer sighed. “We don’t have to flush ourselves down the toilet again, do we?” He’d had his fill of that when they were searching for the map to the Auran landfill.

“Agnes doesn’t know what happens inside the Port-a-Potty,” his dad said. “BEM workers go in, and they don’t come out for days.”

“Sounds like bowel trouble to me,” Bernard muttered.

“It’ll be trouble, all right,” Alan said. “Agnes believes that we’ll need a Sweeper once we get into the Port-a-Potty. No one gets in or out without one of those hybrid monsters escorting them.”

“How are we going to get a Sweeper to help us?” Penny asked.

“We know the Sweepers were invented in the BEM laboratory,” Walter said. “So we should expect the place to be swarming with them.”

“What’s the best way to deal with them?” Bernard asked.

“A fatal blow will knock the Glop out of them,” Walter explained. “With it goes their eyesight, leaving them blind and quite harmless.”

“You’re sure they can’t transform again?” Daisy said.

Walter shook his head. “It takes a potion to change them into Sweepers. As long as they don’t drink another, they shouldn’t be much of a threat. But they also won’t be much help to us, since we’ll probably need them in Sweeper form to get past the security features inside the Port-a-Potty.”

The mention of Sweeper potions reminded Spencer of something. “There might be another way,” he said. “I stole the Sweeper potion that Director Garcia was supposed to drink. Maybe we can use it to trick the Port-a-Potty’s security and get into the lab without a Sweeper.”

“Good thinking, kid!” Bernard said.

Spencer turned around and grabbed his belt from the back of the chair where he’d draped it. “I put it in this back pouch,” Spencer said, digging his hand into the pocket. He rooted around, his heartbeat quickening as his fingers failed to find the small vial of Sweeper potion.

“Wait,” he muttered. “Where . . .” Spencer swallowed hard. “It’s gone.”

“Maybe it done fell out?” Earl said.

“Impossible,” Spencer said. “These are spill-proof pouches. Stuff can’t fall out!” A sinking feeling started in his stomach, and he knew exactly what had happened. Spencer leapt to his feet, eyes darting around the cramped janitorial closet. “Oh, no,” he muttered, his gaze falling on the empty door frame. “Where’s Dez?”