The Nerdy Dozen (13 page)

“Found these two causing a scene, trying to act like ostriches out front,” said the guard who escorted the twins into the holding cell.

“Sorry, guys,” Waffles whispered. “Looks like Operation: Ostrich Freedom didn't go as well as we'd hoped.”

“WAIT!” NEIL CRIED OUT AFTER THE DEPARTING GUARDS. HE banged his head on the glass wall, and everyone got a little grossed out, as a night without a shower meant he left a greasy approximation of his forehead on the glass. But with his hands tied, he figured it was the next best thing.

“I want to speak to Harris!”

“It's no use, Neil. We've already tried the ‘yelling for hours' approach,” said Corinne.

Neil looked around the room—Jones, Wells, and Lopez had been stripped of their gear, their mouths duct-taped shut. The two captured pilots looked hungry and nearly on the brink of ostrich-racing-induced insanity.

Neil felt horrible. It was his fault this whole plan had backfired—if that pizza-delivery boy hadn't recognized him, if he hadn't insisted on playing Feather Duster through the final level last night, this wouldn't have happened. His mind raced to create a plan for escape.

“Well, look at it this way. At least now we have more contestants in our Feather Duster tournament,” said Jason 1.

That's it!
Neil thought. The only name holding the top scores belonged to Harris. That was the real reason Neil was locked up in a factory manager's office. And hopefully, it would be the reason he got out.

Neil squirmed to look at his watch. It was just past one p.m. Harris had said some kind of transfer would happen at four p.m. sharp. Whatever that was, Neil had a feeling it wasn't good.

“Hey!” Neil yelled again, trying to get the guards' attention.

“Quiet, my friend,” urged Yuri. “Or else they'll make you be quiet.”

“Hey! I want to talk to Harris! I want to speak to the guy in charge here!”

One of Harris's guards walked into the room, and Neil hurried to start talking before the guy could get Taser happy. “You tell Harris that if he wants to know the location of three more Chameleons on these islands, he has to come in here and talk to me,” Neil said calmly. Behind his duct tape, Jones started mumbling something that made Neil a little glad he couldn't talk right now.

The guard conferred with his accomplice and left.

“I hope you know what you're doing, Neil,” Sam warned, her complexion pale.

“I do,” Neil said. He just hoped he was right.

 

An hour later, the guards returned from the front hallway with Harris in tow. Harris stepped into the prison and examined Neil with his cold, brown-flecked eyes, saying nothing. His one arm was still in a sling.

“Three more Chameleons?” he said finally.

“Yup. And if you want them, I can tell you where they are,” Neil said. “But you have to beat me at Feather Duster. And claim your top spot back. Otherwise, no deal.”

“You do know I
made
that game, right? I don't care about a stupid score on one stupid console. I have a million copies, and I've mastered every one. I know every detail of every level. I spent years inventing it.”

Neil knew this wouldn't be easy.

“Who cares?” Neil said. “The one at Penny's—the only one on the island, the one everyone here plays—you know that's the only one that matters. If you don't accept my challenge, everyone will always know who
really
has the top score. So, what do you say? One-on-one, your game, your island, your record. I lose, you keep us locked up and get three more planes. You lose, you have to let us all go. Agreed?”

Neil was trying to act casual, but his stomach was twisting into knots, and he felt a pins-and-needles tingling in the tips of his fingers. He hoped his hunch was right—that if Harris had already stolen one of the jets, he would jump at the chance to get his hands on three more.

“Well,” Harris said, his voice cool but his eyes lighting up in excitement, “I suppose I've got time for a quick scrimmage.” He nodded to the guards. “Bring him,” he said, and turned to go.

One of the goons untied Neil from the chair and threw a burlap bag over his head, then tossed him over his shoulder like a bag of peat moss. “Okay, really?” Neil protested. “You guys do know that I know where I'm going, right?”

“Silence!” yelled the guard as he shoved him into the backseat of a vehicle. Neil felt a body slide into the seat next to him and assumed it was Harris.

Questions. I should be asking questions.
Neil had seen enough superhero and action movies to know that if he could keep the villain talking, Harris might eventually reveal something that could hurt him, some kind of weakness.

“So, what did you mean when said you made that game?” Neil asked, his nose rubbing against the fibrous bag enveloping his face.

Only silence. Neil heard the vehicle's ignition turn over.

“Like, did you design the cover art?” he persisted.

“Ha. So simple, your little thoughts,” Harris replied. “I created it. Without any help or assistance.”

“Oh, so you, like, wrote all the code for it? Designed the levels and stuff?” Neil asked.

“Of course,” Harris responded. “I've been coding my whole life. Feather Duster was just my first game.”

“What happened? Why did it get canceled? Did you not want to make it anymore?” Neil tried to remember the TV psychiatrists his mother loved, the way they shot rapid-fire questions at people to try to trip them up. Then again, their issues had to do with hoarders and people addicted to eating household cleaning supplies.

“Oh, it wasn't my choice. My—” Harris stopped himself.

Neil remained silent. He got the sense that if he pressed Harris, Harris would never admit what he was about to say.

“Father. My father cut the funding, the fool.”

His father canceled his own son's game?

“He read too many of those articles,” Harris went on, his voice tense. “The reviewers trashed it. They thought the start was boring, that the racing wasn't lifelike enough, that the controls were clunky,” Harris fumed. “Like they would know! We had promotions, toys, tie-ins with pet stores, everything. And the second game was even better than the first!” Harris slammed a fist into his passenger-side door. “But those without faith will soon see how wrong they were.”

“Need help with things on the ostrich front?” Neil offered from behind the bag on his head. “I think I might know a guy who's a real top-notch dude for ostrich-related stuff.”

“The controls are fine! Not that you would know,” Harris scoffed. “Not that anyone would know what riding an ostrich is like. Ridiculous to compare something you can't even understand.”

“But this guy, Weo. He'd be—”

“Wait, what did you say?” Harris snapped. “What name did you just say?”

Neil felt that somehow he'd hit a nerve and wasn't sure if it was best to repeat it.

“Theo. My friend Theo? His family lives on a llama farm. He has a few ostriches he likes to keep around, too. For, ya know, getting groceries and stuff. The basics,” Neil babbled on. “I could set you guys up with a chat thing, just to see if you're feeling good about—”

“You talk too much.”

Seconds of silence stretched out, making their presence felt between the two boys, who both badly needed some sort of shampoo or conditioner or, at the very least, a bar of soap.

“What I don't understand,” Neil tried again, “is what you want with the Chameleon. I mean, obviously it's insanely cool. You've flown it, right?” Silence. Neil blinked, wishing he could see Harris's expression, but he couldn't see anything through the weave of the burlap sack. “What I mean is, what's the connection between the Chameleon and Feather Duster? 'Cause if you're trying to make a game based on the Chameleon, it already exists. And now you've stolen a jet fighter from the military. Don't you know what kind of trouble you're about to be in?”

“Trouble?” Harris said, ignoring the rest of Neil's questions. “Trust me, you haven't seen anything close to trouble yet.” Harris laughed madly, a menacing cackle of a laugh.

If this kid invented a video game, he can't be evil . . . can he?

“I noticed your arm was in a sling. How'd you hurt it?” Neil asked.

“Why do you care? It won't hinder my gaming, if that's what you're curious about,” Harris said.

“Did you fall? As in, from high up?”

“No,” Harris said quickly—too quickly. Neil knew he was getting to him.

“You fell from a net, didn't you?”

“No more questions.”

The rough burlap could not contain the smile that was spreading over Neil's face.

 

As Neil felt the prod of a guard behind him, the burlap sack was ripped from his head, scratching his lips and eyelids. Another guard clipped the ties from his wrists. Neil stretched out his arms, which had been cramped up for hours, and flexed his fingers, ready to play.

They were standing in front of the Feather Duster game at Penny's place, and Neil watched Harris enter a code to skip the first few levels and go right to the race. Neil looked around for Penny and heard her voice outside. Harris's men were keeping her at bay.

“Take your controls, ManofNeil,” Harris scoffed.

Neil walked up to the game and took his controls, but immediately noticed a slight difference between his bird and Harris's. While Neil's was a standard racing ostrich, it seemed Harris had received a talon upgrade, which increased his speed, handling, and agility during the race.

Of course he cheated.
Neil readied himself for the race, taking a few deep breaths. The fate of his friends was riding on this game. At the sound of the horn, the two birds sprinted from their beach starting line into wild jungle, weaving between thick palm trees and ornate slabs of granite. Neil focused intently, keeping an eye on Harris's progress as well as his own. Even with Harris's upgrade, Neil was keeping pace.

“Harris, I gotta say—aside from a few things, this is a pretty fun game,” Neil confided. Harris looked dead ahead, saying nothing. “I mean, the marble roll? The racing? I think it's great, and I'm bummed for you it didn't go like you'd hoped.”

The two ostriches pushed on, and Neil began pulling ahead by a few yards. Neil leaned forward in concentration.

“Not so fast,” said Harris as he grabbed a coconut with his ostrich's mouth and shot it at Neil's bird. Neil's ostrich avatar fell forward, squawking in a comical tumble that sent feathers flying in every direction. Neil rapidly tapped the button on the arcade's console, urging his ostrich to get up and keep running.

“It's the final stretch!” announced the voice of an ostrich-race announcer, and a racetrack flag flapped across the screen.

Neil gained ground, and as the two ostriches neared the end of the jungle path, he spotted some hidden ostrich-boosting food pellets beneath the shimmering leaves of a plant on the side of the path.

“Pellet power-up!” blasted the game's voice. Neil rocketed forward on the ostrich superfuel, rushing up to Harris's bird. The two furiously ran forward, and Neil could see the finish line just past the edge of the tree line ahead. He slammed every button imaginable, and his bird lunged its long and wiry head forward. It would be a beak-to-beak finish.

“Winner!” shouted the game as an ostrich crossed the finish line. Confetti and streamers rained down on Neil's bird.

“Yes!” Neil yelled, quickly recoiling as Harris slammed his uninjured hand into the console.

“That's impossible . . . ,” Harris trailed off.

“Oh, it's possible,” Neil said. “But that was a good game. Seriously. I think with a couple of tweaks, this game could go back on the market.”

Harris bit his lower lip, deep in contemplation.

“You know what? There's more than one way to reclaim my score,” Harris said in anger. He looked behind the speckled arcade system, where the Five-Piece Bandwidth's toolbox was still sitting, long abandoned in the dust behind the Feather Duster console.

“You can always count on those morons to do their jobs poorly,” he muttered, sifting through the metal instrument case and pulling out a pair of thick bolt cutters with soft rubber handles and razor-sharp edges. He snipped the padlock and removed the game's metal backing. “Great thing about these machines is the reset function,” Harris said as he leaned in and started messing with the inside of the game. Neil noticed the wire cutters on the floor and started to develop a plan.

“There!” Harris exclaimed, victorious. “That ought to do it!” The game made a sad, somber beep as the scores were all reset back to zero. Now no one had the top score.

“Guards,” Harris said, nodding at Neil, and the two burly men stepped forward to handcuff him again. They shoved him outside Penny's front doors, and Neil stumbled, nearly losing his balance. He caught himself and turned back for just a second to make eye contact with Penny, who was standing outside, still trying to get into her own pizzeria.

As she and Neil stared at each other, Neil's eyes went wide, in an attempt to say
HELP
.