Crisis Zero (2 page)

I
WASN'T QUITE SURE WHAT TO DO AT FIRST. MR. GOMEZ HAD
brought me down to his office to expel me from school. He'd made that much very clear. Was I still expelled now that he'd been arrested? Should I go back to class? Or just keep standing there in the hallway until I got trampled during the period break?

Going back to class ultimately seemed like the best option. Maybe if I just went to social studies class like normal and pretended nothing was wrong, it would be like nothing at all unusual had happened that morning.
Nobody would even know I was technically supposed to be expelled.

So that's what I did. I simply went back to class.

But acting normal was harder than I expected. I didn't remember a single word anybody said to me the rest of the morning. I was too busy thinking about Principal Gomez. About the possibility that he was actually a secret agent. That he had been the entire time I had been working for the Agency. Could it be a coincidence?

By lunchtime, the news had gotten out. Several classrooms had gotten a front row view out their windows of the NSB putting a handcuffed Mr. Gomez into the back of a black sedan that morning. Though nobody seemed to quite have all of the facts right. Take my best friend, Dillon, for instance. He greeted me at our usual table with his own theory on why Mr. Gomez had been taken away in handcuffs.

“I knew he'd get caught eventually!” Dillon said excitedly as I sat down in between him and his twin sister, Danielle.

She gave me a look that said she also suspected this was related to the Agency somehow. During my last mission, she had intervened and saved me and my mentor, Agent Nineteen (and in doing so, the world). As a result,
the Agency also brought her in to work for them. Her codename was Atlas. Given the fact that we had known each other our entire lives and the fact that we were the only ones each of us could really trust, I couldn't think of a better partner to have.

“Get caught doing what?” I asked.

“Mr. Gomez was an alien in hiding,” Dillon said, his voice lowering to show he was serious. “And those men in black suits were the Men in Black.”

“Like from the Will Smith movies?” our friend Ethan asked. “That's not very original.”

“No, not like in the movies,” Dillon said as if this was the most obvious fact in the world. “Well, I mean, sort of like the movies. Hollywood has to get inspiration from somewhere. But that movie is not at all what the
real
Men in Black are like!”

Most kids would think Dillon was just joking around, but we all knew better. That was the thing about Dillon; he had a crazy conspiracy theory for everything. To him, the world was never as it seemed. Everyone we met had a hidden agenda, everything we saw was hiding something. An apple falling from a tree on a summer day wasn't just an apple falling from a tree. To him, that was surely the start of the Great Apple Rebellion. The beginning of a
war in which genetically altered apples finally rise up against their human slavers and take over the world. Yes, this is actually something he said once when we saw an apple fall to the ground in a park last summer.

“An alien, huh?” I said. “Isn't that a little cliché? My principal is an alien. I think there's already, like, fourteen books, movies, and TV shows out with that same plot.”

“Well, see, that's the thing,” Dillon said, his voice rising again as he got more excited about his theory. “That's the point! That's what they
want
you to believe.”

“So he's not an alien, then?” Danielle asked.

All of Dillon's friends, his sister especially, knew it was just better to humor him and let him get it all out rather than try to argue logically or reason with him.

“Of course not!” Dillon nearly shouted, getting so worked up he was standing now. “That'd be ridiculous. In reality, Principal Gomez is a Galaxy Ranger, and the men in suits were enemy aliens just
disguised
as Men in Black. Right now, as we speak, old Gomez is probably being tortured in some secret alien lair. I bet it's the Arby's. I always knew there was something off about the Arby's on Buchanan Street. You know what I mean.”

Normally I'd have laughed at Dillon's theory. Usually I found them funny. But this time, since I actually
suspected that I sort of knew the truth behind Gomez getting arrested, or at least part of the truth, I was too worried about what it all might mean to play along.

But I forced a laugh anyway, so Dillon wouldn't suspect that I knew more than I did.

“You know, most kids just think he was arrested by the FBI for drug smuggling or something,” Danielle said.

“Most kids are wrong,” Dillon said quietly, sitting down again. “As usual.”

“I agree with Dillon,” our friend Katie chimed in. “I kind of like the idea of Mr. Gomez getting his face sliced off by an Arby's roast beef machine.”

“I heard it was just unpaid parking tickets,” our friend Adie said. “Hundreds of them.”

“Secret agent–looking dudes don't show up in black SUVs to arrest people for unpaid parking tickets,” Zack countered.

“Yeah, if there are, like, a thousand of them, they do,” Adie shot back.

And so started our table's debate over what had happened to Mr. Gomez—very likely mirroring what was happening at every single table in the school cafeteria at that moment. But the truth was that I wasn't really listening to them. Instead, I was focused on my school lunch.
Not on actually eating it of course, that'd be gross. I was more interested in searching for a secret message. That's how the Agency contacted me at school: secret messages from Agent Chum Bucket snuck into my school lunch. And I'd say our own principal getting arrested for being some sort of secret agent merited some sort of message. Was Gomez really an enemy agent? Can we be sure those guys in suits were even with the NSB? Had the Agency framed Gomez to keep me from getting expelled?

I focused on my lasagna, sure there was going to be a message inside it from the Agency. The other kids at the table were probably wondering what the heck I was doing with my lunch, but I didn't care. I needed answers.

After completely dismantling it, I found nothing but thick, gooey noodles, orange sauce, and a white paste that somehow passed for cheese. No information from the Agency whatsoever. And there was no way I could just go ask either of my two mentors, Agent Nineteen or Agent Blue, who normally doubled as teachers at the school for their covers. They hadn't been back to school since my last mission had spiraled out of control and resulted in Agent Nineteen getting shot a few times and Agent Blue bitten by a poisonous snake. They were still recovering from their injuries.

I was seconds away from picking up my tray and throwing it across the cafeteria in a fit of frustration when Danielle suddenly grabbed my arm underneath the table.

I looked at her and she motioned with her eyes for me to look down. In her other hand, on her lap, she held a small marinara-covered slip of paper.

AGENT ZERO AND AGENT ATLAS: COME TO THE SHED. IMMEDIATELY.

N
ORMALLY WHEN I NEEDED TO SNEAK AWAY FROM OUR LUNCH
table for secret agent business, I'd have to make up some crazy excuse. Partly because Dillon was always so suspicious of everything that everybody did, and partly because it wasn't like me to suddenly bail on lunch with friends. But that day it was easy. Our table, and the cafeteria in general, were so consumed with arguments speculating about Mr. Gomez that Danielle and I simply stood up and left.

“Do they always contact you that way?” Danielle asked
as we walked quickly down the sledding hill adjacent to the practice football field.

“In school lunches, yeah,” I said, a little offended they'd sent her the message and not me. “Agent Chum Bucket is one of the cafeteria workers.”

“So that's why you've been suddenly leaving during lunch so much lately!” she said.

I grinned and shrugged. This was technically Danielle's first school day as an official secret agent. It felt kind of nice not being the new kid anymore.

When we got to the school's maintenance shed, which hid the entrance to Agency headquarters, I was shocked to see that none of our usual contacts were there to meet us. Not Agent Blue, Agent Nineteen, or Director Isadoris. Instead, it was some woman I'd never seen before.

She was young—younger than my mom, anyway, but still an adult. Maybe as old as a college student, or perhaps just a little older, it was hard to tell, especially since her expression was completely blank. If she hadn't been standing on her feet and moving, she probably could have passed for a corpse. She had long blond hair and dark eyes, and wore a gray business suit that matched her unflinching face.

“I'm Agent Smiley,” she said as we approached.

I almost laughed at her codename. But decided it might come off as kind of rude if it wasn't meant to be a joke.

“Uh, hi,” I said.

Danielle said nothing. I could tell how nervous she was without even glancing at her. Danielle liked to help me with my pranks and was pretty cool under pressure. But at the same time, she'd always been the most responsible of the three of us, the one with enough sense to talk Dillon and me out of our craziest ideas. So all of this risky secret agent business was still likely hard for her to take in.

“Director Isadoris sent me here with an assignment for you two,” Agent Smiley said, getting right down to business.

“Where are Agents Blue and Nineteen?” I asked.

Her expression didn't change. She gave away nothing. Her mouth barely even moved when she spoke. And her voice was more monotone and robotic than Betsy's voice. (In case you don't remember, Betsy was the talking, self-destructing data device that had gotten me mixed up in this mess to begin with.)

“They are both still in the medical bay,” Agent Smiley explained. “It's going to be two more days, at the very
least, before they're ready to return to action, so to speak.”

That seemed reasonable enough to me.

“Are we going, uh, to your headquarters?” Danielle asked, speaking for the first time.

“No,” Agent Smiley said. “There isn't time. This mission requires immediate action.”

I didn't like the sound of that. But I said nothing, having learned it was best to just keep quiet and let Agent Smiley explain. Asking questions Agent Smiley was going to answer anyway would only waste what little time Danielle and I had to complete whatever crazy mission they had lined up for us.

“As you know, Principal Gomez has been arrested in connection with suspected traitorous activity,” she continued. “We need you to retrieve Principal Gomez's computer hard drive from his office as soon as possible.”

“So he really
was
some sort of enemy agent?” I asked. “Or do you need his files because he was one of our agents, and you don't want all of his top secret data to get into the wrong hands?”

“No, he has no affiliation with any agency whatsoever,” Agent Smiley said. “The truth is, we really don't know yet why he was detained by the NSB. That's why we need you to retrieve his files. We'd like to find out what
he's being brought in for. The Agency and the NSB don't exactly . . . Well, let's just say there is very little cooperation between the two agencies, even at the highest levels.”

I gave her a quizzical look. It was hard to believe that two agencies on the same side, working for the same government, couldn't manage to work together from time to time.

“Over ninety-nine percent of NSB personnel don't even know the Agency exists,” Agent Smiley said. “Regardless: Principal Gomez's arrest by the NSB as an enemy combatant in our jurisdiction, even if it is erroneous, is something we cannot consider a coincidence. We need to know everything we can. As I said, we simply can't walk into Mr. Gomez's office and ask the NSB to hand over the files. At present, two NSB agents are guarding the data while it awaits proper extraction and transport. One agent is stationed inside Mr. Gomez's office and one just outside. We need you two to get inside and retrieve his hard drive.”

“Why us?” I asked, even though I suspected I already knew the answer.

“You can get close to the area in question without arousing suspicion, being students.”

“What about the other teacher agents?” I asked,
remembering that Agent Nineteen had told me once that he and Agent Blue weren't the only secret agent school employees. “Surely they're better equipped for this sort of mission.”

“There are no other agents posing as teachers,” Agent Smiley said. “As for Agent Chum Bucket, what looks more suspicious—a school cafeteria worker loitering outside the administration office after lunch or a known troublemaking student getting himself into more trouble?”

She made a good point. But my mind was still reeling from her casual revelation that there were no other agents at the school until Agents Nineteen and Blue came back. It was now just Danielle, Chum Bucket, and me.

“Remember, all we need is his computer's hard drive,” Agent Smiley said, checking her watch. “And don't get caught.”

I nodded. Danielle had been pretty quiet, and I glanced her way, just to see how she was taking this in. Her face was pale, almost white. She was either seconds from barfing or keeling over dead. Or both. I didn't want her to feel like she was being forced into this.

“What if we say we're out, that we don't want to be a part of this anymore?” I asked, more to give Danielle a way out than for myself.

Agent Smiley's face remained an unmovable wax mold. It revealed nothing.

“Then you're out,” she said coldly.

“Just like that?” I asked.

Agent Smiley nodded. “How effective can an agent be if he or she is unwilling? If he or she isn't completing assignments with real
purpose
? But I've read your files, Agent Zero. You have more natural talent as a spy than most we've seen—and we've seen plenty. And I don't think you, or Agent Atlas, would turn your backs on this Agency or this country. Not now, not with Medlock still operating somewhere nearby. That has become our lone acting directive: eliminating Mule Medlock before he completely compromises the Agency and our national security. But even still, if you do want out, then we will turn to our secondary plan, which is simply to take out the NSB agents guarding the office and go in by force to get what we need.”

If I had ever considered walking away, I certainly wasn't going to now. She was right. I had tried to go back to a normal life a few months before—going to class, taking tests, pulling the occasional prank. It hadn't worked. This was the only thing I wanted to do. But did Danielle feel the same way?

She swallowed. “I'm in,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Me, too.”

“So, we obviously need a prank, right?” Danielle asked me as we walked back toward the school. “A diversion.”

We both knew we had just a few hours before school let out. A few hours before it would be too late to successfully complete our mission.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “The more important question, though, is what sort of prank would be big enough to distract two highly trained NSB agents whose sole purpose is to watch the one room we need to get into? Not to mention, how will we be able to get out of English class to execute it?”

We had the same class fifth period, which would make it even harder for us both to get out. Most teachers had a policy that only one student was allowed out of class at a time.

“Well, Mrs. Hutchison
loves
me,” Danielle said. “So
I
can get out easily. No problem there.”

That was no surprise. All of the teachers loved Danielle. In their eyes she was the perfect student. She was never late, always did her homework, participated in class, and was smart and opinionated enough to challenge
them intellectually in a way that few students probably could. Danielle made their jobs both easy and fun all at once. A whole classroom full of Danielles was probably what most teachers dreamed about at night.

Me, on the other hand, well, I was most definitely every teacher's worst nightmare. Which meant that I usually couldn't just ask to leave class politely and be allowed to go. In fact, Mrs. Hutchison regarded me uneasily, as if I were plotting horrible deeds 100 percent of the time. Which, to be honest, used to be mostly true. Back before I became a secret agent and had more important things to worry about.

“Back to the prank,” I said. “We need to figure that out before even worrying about getting out of class. What's so insane it could practically clear an entire building?”

“There's always the fire alarm?” she suggested.

A classic. Its reliability and success rate were unparalleled. But somehow I doubted that even a fire alarm would have two NSB agents abandoning their post.

“What about an actual fire?” I suggested.

“No way,” Danielle said immediately. “I'm not starting our school on fire. I don't care what the reason is.”

I sighed and shook my head. She was right; starting the school on fire could result in someone getting hurt.
Besides, it might not even work. It was hard to imagine two NSB agents running from their jobs, screaming in terror at the simple sight of a few flames.

“Hey, Carson,” Danielle said as a grin spread across her face. “A minute or two is all we need to get in, grab the hard drive, and get out. Right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I think I need to give my cousin Brad a call.”