Popular Clone (24 page)

They were almost to the end of the corridor when a door burst open, and a robot that looked like an upsidedown lawn mower shuffled toward them, various blades spinning and slicing the air. Fisher had no intention of finding out what it actually did or why it had been locked up.

“Chop, chop, chop!” the robot screeched. “Slice and dice! Slice and dice!”

Fisher and Two dove for the same door at exactly the same moment, knocking it open. Fisher reached up and shut it behind them. They both caught their breath as they heard the robot hurtle past them.

The room they had fallen into was obviously a break station. There was a desk, a little TV, a bookshelf, and a bunk …

… a bunk with a man sleeping in it. Or, actually, a boy.

“Hey,” Two said as he stood up. “That isn't …”

“It is.” Fisher climbed to his feet and approached the bunk bed. “The most destructive force at Wompalog Mid-dle School.”

“Gassy Greg,” he and Two said simultaneously. Gassy Greg snorted in his sleep.

Fisher and Two looked at each other. The phrase
destructive force
echoed in Fisher's mind.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Two asked.

“If we can find the central grid station,” said Fisher. They looked down at Greg again. “I think we may have found our weapon. But listen—Greg can't know about you.”

Two hid in the room's closet, and Fisher tossed a shoe at Greg to wake him up.

“Hmmmmzz?” Greg said, opening his eyes and sitting up in bed. “What was that? Fisher!” Greg said. “What are you doing here?”

“Just visiting,” Fisher said. “Listen, I need you to—”

“Why are all the alarms going off?” A hint of panic began to creep into Greg's voice. “And where's my dad?”

“Greg, your dad needs your help. Come on.” Fisher grabbed Greg's arm and led him toward the power sta-tion, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make sure Two, who was staying concealed behind falling debris, wasn't far behind.

When they finally made it to the central power source, Greg was gasping. “What—What are we doing in
here
? What's going
on
?”

Fisher knew he had no time to explain, so he just blurted out, “How's your stomach feeling, Greg?”

“My stomach? It's fine.”

“Fine?” Fisher spluttered. “No … rumblings in there?”

“Nope,” said Greg. “I'm actually on these new pills that help with my gluten allergy now. So as long as I avoid sugar and wheat …”

Fisher stared at Greg in disbelief, all his hope drain-ing out of him.

“I am Flapjackotron! I can make pancakes from any substance!” The tinny voice sounded out above the alarm, and the deranged robot came careening down the hallway, spinning its arms. Suddenly, Fisher had an idea.

“Flapjackotron!” he called out, waving his arms to catch the robot's attention. “I require a pancake! A whole stack of them, actually!”

Greg's eyes grew wide. “A pancake robot?” he breathed excitedly.

“Indeed.” Flapjackotron came to a stop directly in front of them. “At your service.” Batter began to ooze out of the sides of its iron head. Soon, it opened its enormous metal tongue, which was as big as a dinner plate. Three pan-cakes were stacked there neatly.

Even though Fisher wasn't hungry at all, he grabbed a pancake and shoved half of it in his mouth. “Mmmm,” he said, even though he thought the pancake tasted a little bit like motor oil. “Delicious!”

“They're maple-syrup flavored!” cried Flapjackotron, with its tongue still wagging out of its mouth.

“I want to try!” Greg cried out, and shoved the remain-ing two pancakes into his mouth.

And then it happened … the rumblings and grum-blings began in Greg's stomach. Fisher knew enough to duck out of the way, just as Greg let a huge one rip.

The power of his personal explosion made the air ducts rattle around them, as his Greg's potent gas flew through the already overtaxed power grid, causing sparks to flare and flames to shoot into the hall.

“Critical failure!” a new electronic voice joined the cho-rus of alarms. “System overload! Meltdown mode! Melt-down mode!”

In only a matter of minutes, the whole place would be a fireball.

Trying to breathe only through his mouth, Fisher grabbed Greg's arm urgently. “Listen, do you know a quick way out of here?”

“Sure,” Greg said.

“Take it,” Fisher said. “Right now. I've got one more thing to take care of, but I'll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay … ,” Greg said, confused, before trotting away.

“All right,” Two said, coming out from behind the door. “I'd say this probably gives us a matter of minutes before the entire place blows. Let's go rescue your pig. At least he smells better than Greg does.”

They ran down the corridor until they reached its end. The lights grew dimmer, and it became hard to see more than a few feet ahead. They entered a laboratory at the end of the hall and made for the door at its far side.

Fisher felt the floor give out from under him. He and Two plunged through a flimsy plastic covering into a deep tank of water. Reflexively, out of surprise, he took a deep breath …

And then realized he
could
breathe. He looked at Two and saw that he'd made the same discovery. The tank that enclosed them fed into a tube that headed in the general direction of the maintenance wing. He pointed to Two, and they swam onward.

The tunnel system seemed to be a part of the breathable water experiment. Fisher just hoped it wasn't also con-nected to the tank containing the dancing whales—the last thing he wanted to deal with was a bunch of twoton underwater mammals controlled by Dr. X. Fisher and Two swam through the dimly lit tubes until they reached a hatch. Working together, they managed to push it open and pull themselves out onto the floor of a large, graypainted room strewn with machines, tools, and mechanical parts. Water pooled around their feet, and Two's teeth started chattering. Goose bumps covered his arms and chest.

“This must be maintenance,” said Fisher, hoping he had remembered the map correctly. Panic was building in his chest. “But I don't see anyone. And where's FP?”

“Shh!” said Two. “What's that?”

As they moved forward, they heard a chorus of shouts, an odd electronic voice, and dull, thudding footsteps.

Then, as they rounded a corner, they saw five security guards trying to wrestle a giant fifteen-foot robot to the ground. It was yet another robot that seemed to have gone berserk—it rolled around on tank-like treads, its five cylindrical arms whirling in loops, and the light atop its spherical head blinking wildly.

“DANCE WITH ME! DANCE WITH ME!” it blurted in an off-pitch voice, flailing its arms. It sounded happy as it kept rolling into another room, the guards chasing after it.

Fisher and Two exchanged a glance before running onward.

They passed another robot that was doing nothing but standing in a corner and trying to count to five (it seemed unable to remember the last number), took another turn, and found themselves at the entrance to the maintenance room. Three guards stood behind a security desk, all shouting into their radios, trying to make sense of the commotion.

Fisher and Two skidded to a halt, but the guards had already seen them.

“Run!” Two called out, but before the duo could turn around, they'd been surrounded.

“End of the line, boys,” one of the guards said.

“Dr. X is gonna have some fun with you,” another said, scratching his thick stubble. “Maybe test out the new landsquids.”

Two and Fisher were back-to-back, and Fisher turned his head to his clone. He felt as though his insides had been filled with concrete. They had come so far … and been so close… .

But he felt a surge of courage when he looked into Two's face, whose own expression was one of determination. Their fate was inevitable now. The only thing to do was face it. They nodded to each other.

Fisher forced a small smile. “You know, maybe there
is
something to be said for causing trouble.”

“Told you it was fun,” Two replied.

The guards took their time, weapons raised, shuffling in gradually, making sure there were no avenues of escape.

“It's been good escaping with you, brother,” Fisher said. “And I do have to admit, Amanda
is
pretty cute.”

Two chuckled. “Veronica's not too bad herself. I can see why you like her.”

Fisher blushed. “That obvious, huh?”

“Like a lighthouse on the dark side of the moon.”

The guards were less than two feet away.

Fisher smiled, and extended his hand to Two. They shook, nodded to each other, and turned to face their end.

Suddenly, a powerful squeal split the air, and a winged pink streak collided with one of the guards, knocking him over. The other guards turned in confusion, and Fisher and Two took the chance to leap on them. Fisher wrapped his arms around the guard's head and held on, covering his eyes. He managed to steer the man into a wall, and the guard knocked himself out. Fisher jumped off his back before he could get dragged to the floor.

Two's guard was down, too, though Fisher hadn't seen how. And there, in between the two of them, was the happy-looking, tail-wagging FP, who had somehow sub-dued the third guard. Fisher scooped up FP and hugged him, and the little pet snuffled happily in response.

“I don't know how you did any of this, boy,” Fisher said, “but you will never want for snacks again for the rest of your life.”

Two reached out cautiously to pet FP, and the little pig, after hesitating a moment, bent his head down so that he could.

“Two minutes! Two minutes until overload and detona-tion!” came the wailing of the complex's system “Evacu-ate immediately!”

“What do you say we get out of here?” Two raised his eyebrows.

Fisher pointed. “Right out that door is a main corridor that'll take us straight out of the building.”

Fisher kept FP tucked under his arm as they ran. They raced past a herd of what could only be described as “monkeyraffes”—furry, spotted creatures with long legs, short arms, and prehensile tails—they ran past a cloud of millimeter-sized robots that were swarming over a guard's face, trying to apply extensive makeup to it, and they ran past an altercation between their earlier acquaintance Flapjackotron and his new arch-nemesis, Wafflonator.

A faint, low thrumming sound started, and very slowly grew in volume. The power generator was starting to overload. Fisher saw the door ahead of them, wide open because of the unbelievable work of FP, and the Califor-nia sunshine beaming beyond it. Just fifty feet more … then twenty …

They were seconds away from freedom when a dark shape stepped into the doorway. It was Granger, without his Dr. X mask, looking a lot less put-together than the last time Fisher saw him. He had an evil-looking weapon in his right hand that was pointed straight at Fisher's head.

“I should have known better than to put the two of you in a room together,” he said, sounding tired—sounding, in fact, a lot like he often did after double-lab period at Wompalog. “You've almost completely wrecked my compound. Fortunately, all of it can be repaired. Only a tem-porary setback. Soon, I'll be standing over Ed Woodhouse's crumbling empire, laughing. And the rest of the world will follow in his ruined footsteps. It will be a glorious sight. Too bad you won't be around to see it.”

Fisher instinctively pressed himself back against the wall. There was nowhere to hide, and no place to take cover. FP growled in his arms.

“Good-bye, Fisher. Or shall I say, good-bye,
Fish
-
ers.
” Granger's finger began to wrap around the trigger. But before he could fire, a cloud of white, noxious vapor exploded, making him jump back in shock. The smells of rotten eggs and garbage filled the corridor.

Two, his last tissue bomb deployed, leapt forward faster than anything Fisher had ever seen. Granger, who had been aiming at Fisher, tried to swing the weapon back to defend himself but couldn't get off a shot before Two had his hands around his wrist, trying to twist the weapon away. Granger, for all of his genius, was still a very small man, and not much of a fighter. He had hired—or built— others to do his fighting for him. Without his fancy equipment, Two was giving him a run for his money.

Just then a massive explosion rocked the building. Debris crashed down from the ceiling, cutting Fisher off from Granger and Two, who fell to the deck, grappling fiercely.

“Go, Fisher!” Two shouted, punching and elbowing the evil scientist, who fought back with all of his fiendish effort. “GO!!”

Fisher tried to find a way to Two, but the wreckage blocked his path. As more explosions followed, Fisher grabbed FP and bolted for the door as fast as he could. Sunlight struck his face, something he'd feared would never happen again. He sprinted past the abandoned guardhouse, through the open gate, and onto the grass surrounding the outer walkway.

Streaming out from all sides were fleeing workers and guards, mixed in with dozens of robots with varying degrees of sanity. He saw Gassy Greg being tugged by the hand by a man Fisher assumed to be his dad. He even saw a massive tractor-bot hauling an enormous tank con-taining the experimental whales.

A boom shook the ground, sounding like a torrential thunderstorm compressed into a single second, and the explosion knocked Fisher ten feet forward. He skidded to a halt flat on his face, with FP squirming and squealing underneath him.

He picked himself up, and turned back to look at the compound.

And found that it wasn't there anymore. The compound had collapsed in on itself within a single second. A column of fire and smoke jetted up into the sky. It was as wide as the building itself and soared hundreds of feet into the air as the ground kept shaking. It took minutes for the inferno to subside. Fisher had to throw his arms over his eyes to keep from being blinded. The explosion had jettisoned straight up—otherwise Fisher and everything for blocks would have been swept up in the blast.