The Adventures of Kid Combat Volume One: A Secret Lost (4 page)

“It had to be one of Jones’s hired goons,”
Wedge concluded. “Remember the Mulberry mission? I think we might
have gotten a bit careless on that one.”

Kyle nodded. “It’s possible. Samantha didn’t
say much about anything, only that she cracked the code. Now listen
up,” he said, pointing a finger at each of the boys. “This is a
dangerous time for us, and security needs to be tight. We can’t
have any mistakes. We are way too close to opening The Playground.
Then, and only then, will we be safe. We can’t take anything for
granted.”

The boys looked at each other, then Timmy
chimed in, “We won’t.”

He glanced up from the circle when he heard
something coming closer. Timmy was always a bit paranoid. But this
time, someone was coming.

“Hey look, here comes Ricky,” Timmy said.

The four boys looked up and over Timmy’s left
shoulder. There, they saw Ricky, another boy in their class. He was
also a good friend of Kyle’s. It had always bothered Kyle that
Ricky wasn’t part of the alliance.

Ricky was a smart boy. He was well read in
many areas and versed in science and mathematics. He was also a
whiz on the computer. Gears would never admit it, but Ricky was
just as good at creating shell scripts and batch jobs as he was.
Ricky also was quite the hacker.

Ricky was well liked by everyone in school.
He had an infectious personality, and people always gravitated
toward him. He was average height for a ten-year-old, Hispanic, and
he was slightly overweight. He wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans
that were a bit to clean for kid his age. Ricky was, however, in a
wheelchair.

Following a car accident at age seven, Ricky
learned then that he would never walk again. But no one ever heard
him complain. He transcended the limitations of his wheelchair and
adopted it into his lifestyle. He never let it slow him down.

There were a handful of modifications on his
wheelchair, all made by Ricky himself. Better shocks, a place for
his MP3 player, cell phone, and a handheld gaming system. The most
impressive adaptation, though, was a small keyboard and screen that
slid out from a small pocket by one of the wheels that always
allowed Ricky to get into some sort of trouble.

He was truly smart and belonged in the small
group with Kid Combat. His wheelchair had nothing to do with why he
wasn’t a part of the alliance. Kid and the other boys never even
thought for a second that would be an issue. Kid just felt, as did
the others, that until they were well established—until they were
sure that they were safe—the fewer that knew the truth, the
better.

That was all starting to change.

Ricky noticed the boys staring at him and
went over to talk to them. The boys broke their huddle and met
Ricky half way.

Ricky spoke first. “Hey, guys.”

Kyle nodded and grinned. “What up?”

“Oh, not much. Recess is kind of boring for
me today. I forgot my laptop at home, and, well, as you can guess,
I’m not really good on the monkey bars,” Ricky joked. The boys
shared a small laugh.

“Don’t worry. It’s a shortened day. We’ll get
you home soon,” Kyle added. “Then, you can get back to your out of
date 486.”

“Nice. I don’t think so, Kyle,” Ricky
retorted. Kyle always bashed on Ricky’s computer, even though Kyle
knew it was the slickest in town. “I won’t be coming over to your
house today.”

Kyle burst out laughing. “Ricky, you’re too
clever for me sometimes. But one of these days, I’ll have a better
setup than you, and then we’ll see who comes to who.”

“You wish, dude,” Ricky said before wheeling
away. A small tug on a joystick sent his automated chair in motion.
“The day I come to you for anything computer-related is a long way
away.”

Ricky started back toward class. When he was
out of earshot, Kyle and the boys resumed their circle, and this
time, the focus was on their departed friend.

“I think we can trust him. And we need him,”
Timmy said.

“Yeah, I agree, Kyle” Wedge said. Kyle turned
and watched Ricky make his way up the ramp. He wanted Ricky to be a
part of this more than any of the other boys, but he knew that the
timing was off.

“While I agree that we need him, now is not
the right time. We have our own problems to deal with.” Kyle
said.

Gears chimed in. “Like what?”

“Like finding out what Jones knows,” Kyle
replied.

“What’s our next move, Kyle?” Wedge asked,
knowing a mission wasn’t to far off.

“I need to meet with Samantha, figure out
what she knows. Then we can plan our next move. I’ll meet you in
the usual place, usual time,” Kyle said with a wink.

The boys went back to class and a short time
later, school finally let out. Kyle chose to walk home alone that
day and he finally reached Sunnydale Drive- the dead end street he
lived on that backed up to Maple Forest. His house was the fourth
from the end on the left, but he walked right by it and proceeded
up the driveway of the house that was one beyond his own. It was
Samantha’s house.

Samantha was Kyle’s closest friend and had
been for as long as he could remember. She was the only one besides
the three boys who knew Kid Combat’s true identity. She was one of
the original five, a co-founder of the secret group, and the one to
give it its name: the Secret Order of Clever Kids, or SOCKs.

SOCKs as a unit was still a secret. The town
had heard stories of Kid Combat, but it didn’t know that there were
others. This made it much easier for the five friends to operate;
however, that very freedom had been jeopardized just the night
before.

Samantha was smart, and she was responsible
for some of the gadgets that Kid used on his adventures. Also ten
years old, she had strawberry blonde hair just past her shoulders,
and she was with Kid every step of the way.

Kyle walked up her driveway and headed around
the house to the garage, one of SOCKs’s strongholds. From there,
countless missions were planned flawlessly. Kyle knocked on the
door and heard a faint, “Come in.”

He entered the garage to find it filled with
boxes. It was an unusual sight for him, as the garage was usually
filled with Samantha’s tools and paperwork. She had claimed the
space from her parents last summer and operated a large portion of
SOCKs from there. But Samantha had already started packing her
stuff, to move it to a new secret location—The Playground.

Kyle didn’t get a chance to speak. Samantha,
who was packing feverishly, beat him to it.

“He knows who we are!” Samantha said, tossing
her belongings into a box. She was in an obvious state of panic.
And Samantha was never in a state of panic. She was always the calm
one. More and more items flew into an unmarked box.

“What?” Kid exclaimed in disbelief.

“Well, not exactly who we are, but he knows
of us,” Samantha said, pointing at herself. “Judging by the
contents of that envelope, Jones knows of SOCKs. He knows something
is going on. I’m afraid if he saw any of this, it will come out,”
Samantha replied.

“You got this back just in time. We need to
get all this safe,” she said, motioning to nearby documents. “We
need to accelerate The Playground before we are caught.”

Samantha went back to packing as Kid’s mind
wondered for a moment. How much did Jones find out? How did he find
out? Did he know any names? What were his next steps? These
questions and more whirled around in his head as he tried to put
all this together. He turned from Samantha and took a few small
steps. His right hand was over his face, covering his eyes. He was
in deep thought and deep concern.

“What does he know?” questioned Kid as he
turned back to his friend, who was in the back corner dropping
papers into a large cardboard box.

“Not much, but definitely enough to cause
problems. We can’t afford too many mistakes right now—not when
we’re so close,” she said.

“Okay, okay, I’m on it. You just get The
Playground ready. I’ll do the rest,” Kid said.

“We’re almost done. The boys have been
working their tails off, but we’ll need more recruits when The
Playground opens,” Samantha said as she stopped packing and looked
up. Kid’s mind went immediately to Ricky. He would be perfect. He
could help Samantha and the boys get The Playground up to speed.
Kid so wanted to mention this to Samantha, but he didn’t.

“We’ll worry about that when the time’s
right. Adding recruits right now would only add to our problems. We
need to focus on keeping SOCKs a secret. Then we’ll figure out who
we can trust,” Kid said, not knowing if he was trying to convince
Samantha or himself. He seemed to do both.

“You’re right,” Samantha said, nodding her
head. “I’ll get everything moving from here. Go meet the boys.”

“You know what this means though,” Kid said
to Samantha. There was a small pause as the two friends stared at
one another. “You’ll need a nickname now, too.”

“I don’t need one of those,” Samantha said
with a sly smile. “I’m too smart to get caught.”

The two friends shared a quick laugh before
Kid went home and radioed the boys.

They set up a meeting for eight o’clock that
night.

Chapter Three:

Tree House Meeting

8:00 pm

Among a few blades of grass and near the root
of a large tree, a small, round, red ball started to flash. No
bigger than a pencil eraser, the red LED flickered on and off.
Below the light was a black ball that contained a very small
camera. It swiveled back and forth on its base, patrolling its
designated area.

There was a security breach.

Someone or something had tripped the alarm.
Security was tight, and it wasn’t the first time an alarm of this
nature had been seen. Going in and out of focus, the camera tried
to find something approaching.

Images produced by the camera were sent
fifteen feet up the tree into an elaborate house. Inside, a larger
red light started flashing on the main control panel and got the
attention of a small boy sitting at a laptop across the room. He
gazed up from his typing to see the alarm. He glanced at the
monitors and went back to his work.

A few seconds later, the alarm cleared. All
systems were normal. This guest was expected.

Kid Combat was the first one to reach Gears’s
tree house. Gears lived on the other side of Maple Forest. A quick
walk through the forest and a cut between two backyards led Kyle to
Gears’s backyard and the tree house.

The boys always held secret meetings there to
discuss their next steps on whatever adventure they were working
on. The meetings were strictly for SOCKs members, and the utmost
care went into securing the area. Motion detectors were all over
Gears’s backyard, as were low-cost security cameras that the group
found in an abandoned building. Secret compartments lining the tree
house held secret documents, small gadgets, and important data.

To an untrained eye, the tree house was
nothing more than a typical boy’s playhouse. It was built in an elm
tree about fifteen feet up. Seven wood planks nailed into the tree
acted as a ladder to the main entrance. The house itself was made
from mismatched planks of wood that were left over from various
projects at the Gears household.

The inside was painted dark red, and both
side walls had a window. An empty crate in the center of the room
acted as a table, and small chairs surrounded it. The security
monitors were set up on a side wall and were covered on non-meeting
days with a large fake speaker. Comic books littered the floor,
posters covered the walls, and a sign that read “No Girls Allowed”
flanked the entrance. It was more a decoration than a rule.

Kid Combat climbed up the tree and entered
the small house. A skinny and somewhat fragile ten-year-old boy
with jet black hair and glasses sat at his laptop. It was Connor
Jordan, also known as Gears. He was a typical computer geek. He was
always typing away on his computer. On weekends, while other boys
were playing baseball at the park, Gears was on the sidelines,
calculating statistics on the batters versus the pitchers.

The bigger, meaner kids at school always
picked on Gears, but he didn’t care. He was too smart to worry
about bullies. He took his verbal blows and moved along without
much of a fight. He knew he would become something someday, and he
was part of something special with SOCKs.

As Kid entered, Gears jumped up.

“Ha! I won, finally! I beat the Russian in
chess!” Gears said as he danced around the tree house, pumping his
arms in the air in a victorious fashion. He took a few laps around
the tree house, then went back to his keyboard with a devilish grin
on his face.

“I knew I would get him today. I just knew
it!”

Kid stood there and smiled at Gears’s
delight. The poor kid had been playing chess with a Russian for
weeks and had lost every time. But it wasn’t about winning for
Gears. He was sharpening his skills and his mind. That was his real
goal. Then again, it never hurt to win.

“More Internet chess, eh?” Kid inquired,
shaking his head. “Just let me know when you’re ready for me.”

Kid was joking. The two friends vowed never
to play chess against each other. It made it more fun that way, not
knowing who was better and always trading jabs.

“Whatever, Kyle,” Gears said
sarcastically.

Not liking his response, Kid glared back at
Gears. This was official SOCKs business, and code names were
supposed to be used. Gears knew what he had done; he was just
having fun with his friend.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kid Combat,” Gears smirked
and quickly went back to his keyboard.

“You done?” Kid said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to lighten up, my
friend,” Gears said as he looked up from his screen.

“The day I lighten up, my friend, is the day
we get caught,” Kid replied.