Popular Clone (21 page)

“I … don't know what it is, sir,” said the guard.

“Well, whatever it is, and wherever it came from, get rid of it,” Dr. X snapped.

“Yes, sir.” Fisher heard a click as the guard opened a large utility knife, and proceeded to sever the rope. “Oof!” he said, setting Fisher down. “This thing's heavy.” His mouth was inches from Fisher's ear, and he flinched at the volume of the man's voice. Maybe, just maybe, if he kept perfectly still …

“Call down to maintenance. Maybe they know where it came from. In the meantime, put that thing in a corner.” Fisher heard Dr. X's footsteps walking away, and then the guard hoisted him up, grunting. He was plunked down a few feet later, and the guard walked away, wheezing and gasping.

Unfortunately, the guard had placed him next to a wall, facing the corner. He had no idea what was going on behind him.

Fisher spent the next twenty minutes turning himself 180 degrees. Every minute or so he would turn a few inches, as slowly as he could.

Finally, he was facing the rest of the chamber again. The door to Two's cell was just thirty feet away. Maybe, he thought, he could manage to sneak his way to it.

Whenever no one was looking, the shrub edged a few inches along the wall. Fisher hadn't expected a sneaking technique invented by cartoon animals to be so effective, but after just a few minutes, he had cut the distance to the door in half. He couldn't believe his good luck. Just a few minutes more, and the door was right there!

Fisher sucked in a deep breath. He waited until everyone's attention was riveted by misbehaving monkeys in Chamber 17, and then dashed for the door.

That was when he realized he had never precisely calculated the branch spread of the shrubstitute. He tried to push through the doorway, but his branches were too big. He was caught in the middle of the door, wedged there like a baseball shoved up a drainpipe. Branches snapped and rustled, and every head in the room whipped around to stare at the shrub trying to force itself through a too-narrow doorway.

“Grab that thing!” Dr. X's thundering voice echoed through the room. Fisher tried to slip through the door one last time, but strong hands gripped him.

Fisher was dumped unceremoniously in front of Dr. X.

This was it, then. The end. His plan had failed. He'd been so close. So very close.

Dr. X leaned in and began examining the shrub. The cold, gloved hands got closer to Fisher's shoulders and he tried to shrink back, wishing he could just shrivel up into a little husk and blow away. After a few seconds, Dr. X brushed the hidden un-deploy switch. With a loud springing sound, the device collapsed. One of its twirling arms caught the underside of Dr. X's mask as he tried to back away, tearing it off to reveal his face.

A face that Fisher knew.

Fisher gasped.

It was Mr. Granger.

The instant in which the mask came off seemed to stretch into an hour. Fisher gaped, wide-eyed, this last horror freezing him solid.

But there it was: the most feared man alive, known only as Dr. X, was Fisher's seventh-grade science teacher.

CHAPTER 21

Even a calculated risk is always part clever, part crazy. In this case, it was also part shrubbery.

—Fisher Bas, Into the Dragon's Mouth

Even though Fisher knew Mr. Granger's face like he knew the first three hundred digits of pi, Granger looked startlingly different. His unkempt, stringy hair was now slicked back. His glasses were gone, and his darting, nervous eyes were now calm and focused. His head no longer jutted forward, but was held perfectly straight. His long, hooked nose ordinarily made him look like a pigeon. Now he looked much more like a hawk.

“Mr. Granger?!” Fisher was finally able to blurt out.

“Fisher!” Granger shouted simultaneously in his oddly low Dr. X voice. Then, whirling around to his assistants, “How did he escape from his cell? I'll roast you all alive if you slacked off on security!”

“Negative, sir!” said one of the workers at the computer station. “Prisoner is still secure.” He pointed up at a screen, which blinked to the cell camera, where Two was still sitting cross-legged in the corner. The expression of —Granger X? Dr. G?—became darker.

“Check the cell in person,” he barked to the same guard who had cut Fisher down from the rope. “He might have hacked the camera.”

The guard walked quickly through the automatic sliding door.

Fisher was still in shock.

“I … thought you were my friend,” he managed to choke out.

“Yes, Fisher, you were supposed to think that,” Granger said, letting a quick laugh escape his lips. “I knew that I had to ingratiate myself with you in order to find out more about your mother's work and, eventually, to have the power to wrest it from her. You were a tool, Fisher. Just another piece of lab equipment, like all the rest.”

Fisher was now clenching his jaw too tightly to respond.

“He's there, sir,” said the guard as he returned to the room.

“Then what … ,” began Granger, furrowing his brow in confusion. Then, as if a lever had been thrown in his brain, a fiendish smile spread across his face as he pieced everything together. “Oh my. Yes, now I see. How wonderful. All I wanted was a sample of the solution. I didn't know there was a
finished product
walking around. Even
I
didn't expect to have an AGH clone in my cell. That explains recent events quite a bit. I must admit, I had my suspicions … when you started to act strange… .”

“H-How do you know
I'm
not the clone?” sputtered Fisher, trying to regain any kind of advantage.

“He's been fighting and shouting ever since we brought him here,” answered Granger as Fisher had now taken to thinking of him. “He has been brave, defiant, noble.” Dr. X-G chuckled again. “I know you, Fisher. You are none of these things.
That's
why he's been causing such a stir at school.”

Granger beckoned with one hand, and a guard came forward and bound Fisher's hands with a cord that felt like a live snake. It hung loosely on his wrists when they were still, but the instant he tried to wrestle out of his constraints, it coiled up tighter than a steel cable.

“W-Why?” Fisher managed to stutter. He was filled with a cold anger, which made thinking impossible. “Why are you doing this? Just who
are
you?”

“Oh, I think the answer to that question is very easy, Fisher,” Granger said with a malicious smile. “Simply put, I am you.”

“You're nothing like me,” Fisher spat out.

Mr. Granger shrugged. “But I am. I am you, a little seed of anger, and a lot of time for that seed to grow.” His eyes became unfocused, as though he were staring into the past.

“I had a brilliant scientific mind from a young age,” Granger went on, clasping his hands behind his back. “I was designing my first electrical circuits when most are still struggling to master the Tinkertoy. I thought that everyone would love and admire me for my talents. Then I found out, just as you did, what school is actually like.

“I was pushed and shoved and mocked and trampled through my early years. And at some point, I had had enough. If the world would not show me respect, why should I show it any? I have spent decades building up my empire. My mind has enabled me to produce a vast array of technology, as well as the patents that fund all of this. Did you know, for example, that it was I who invented the world-famous Automatic Cookie Cutter? No? What about the Self-frying Frozen Fries? Just add water and …” He looked at Fisher expectantly.

Fisher was too angry to congratulate Dr. X on his many food-product inventions, so he just scowled.

“Well, it is no matter,” Dr. X went on. “Suffice it to say, I have contacts in governments the world over. And everything is about to culminate in the first part of my plan,” he said, drawing in a deep breath for emphasis. “Ruining Ed Woodhouse.” Mr. Granger chuckled nastily.

This was not what Fisher had expected. For a moment, confusion blotted out his fear. “Ed Woodhouse … ,” he repeated, still secretly struggling against the coils that were binding him. Maybe if he could keep Granger talking … “You mean, the owner of King of Hollywood?”

“The very same,” said Granger, taking a step closer to Fisher. “When he was your age, he was very much like those Viking boys you dread so much. He spent every day tormenting me, finding newer and crueler ways to humiliate me. He got so good at spitballing he could fire one every two seconds. I kept them, you know. Every last one.” Granger held up a large glass jar of what could only be spitballs. He smiled as he turned the jar around in his hands. “When I get a hold of the AGH—which should happen any moment now, according to a conversation I had with your mother not long ago—”

Fisher's head snapped up.
She had agreed to the ran
som?

Granger went on, “I'm going to use the DNA in those spitballs to make thousands of Ed Woodhouse clones.

Every franchise in the country will receive coordinated, simultaneous visits from their beloved owner.”

He grinned at his own plan. Seeing Fisher's confusion, he explained, “Some of these Woodhouse clones will instruct the cooks to pour hot-pepper oil onto all of the food. Some will tell the waiters to serve every table by throwing the plates from a distance of thirty feet. Some will set the sound system to play ‘My Heart Will Go On' on endless repeat. All across the continent, customers will be streaming out, demanding their money back, vowing never to return. He'll be ruined. His bright and shiny image as ‘America's Nicest Billionaire' will finally slip away. I know what kind of a snake he really is, and I'll show the people. I'll show them all.” The evil scientist's voice had been rising steadily, until he was almost shrieking.

“So …”—Fisher was having trouble piecing Granger's plans together—“you don't want to … take over the world, or something?”

For a moment, the man before him looked more like Mr. Granger again than Dr. X. He snapped out of his reverie and stared down at Fisher. Then he laughed. Not an evil villain laugh, just a simple chuckle building up to a fullthroated, comical laugh. After a few seconds, he stopped, and his face returned to utter seriousness.

“Yes, of course I do,” he said, very matter-of-factly.

“And I will. But first I want to see Woodhouse humili-ated. After that, I'll put the AGH to proper use, raise my own clone army, and within a few years, this planet will bend to my will. You have shown me it can be done,” Granger said, and Fisher detected a bit of admiration in his voice.

For a second, the hugeness of what Fisher had done overwhelmed him: with help from his mother's AGH, Fisher had achieved something that the most brilliant and mysterious scientific mind on earth had not been able to do, even with this immense machine of research supporting him.

Then a chill went through him. He had used it for just as selfish a purpose as Dr. X would have. He thought back to watching Two get beaten up by the Vikings in the bathroom at Wompalog. He had put his clone through pain and humiliation simply because he hadn't felt like dealing with his own problems.

For a moment, staring into Granger's eyes, he thought he recognized himself in the scientist's defiant and angry expression. He felt a little hollow darkness in his own soul. If he let that dark spot spread, he knew that he would end up just like Granger.

“I won't let you get away with it,” said Fisher, wishing he sounded like he believed it. “I'll use everything in my power to fight you.”

“My dear boy,” Granger said, slipping his mask back on, “just because I
offered
to ransom you, doesn't mean I'm going to follow through. By the time the AGH is in my hands this afternoon, you—and your little twin-it-yourself brother—will be quite dead.”