“I broke up with her,” Mike said.
“What? Why?”
Mike shrugged. “I just wasn’t that into her.”
That’s how cool Mike was. He broke up with the most popular girl at school, not the other way around.
Or, at least, he was claiming he’d broken up with her. I wondered if Elizabeth had really ended it—and if Mike was actually angry about that, rather than me.
But then, there was a good chance he was truly angry at me. After all, if Mike had treated me the way I’d been treating him—even though I wasn’t doing it on purpose—I would have been upset too.
We passed some of the only other people dumb enough to be outside on a freezing day: a young couple, probably in their twenties. The girl had green eyes and short dark brown hair, while the guy had brown eyes, blond hair, and a knit ski cap. Both were wearing blue jeans and snow boots. The girl’s hands were tucked deep into the pockets of a pink winter jacket, while the guy had leather gloves with a white paint stain on the thumb.
Normally, I wouldn’t have noticed any of this, but I was working hard to improve my memory skills. It had been three days since I’d been assigned my mission, and to my surprise, most of my prep work had been memory exercises. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as learning martial arts or bomb defusion, but the Hales claimed it was even more important. “A keen memory is the best weapon an agent can have,” Alexander had explained. “Well, besides a gun. Or a knife. And maybe a hand grenade. Okay, technically, there’s a lot of weapons that are better than your memory, but memory’s still awfully important. Because . . . Oh, nuts. I forgot what I was going to say.”
At this point, Cyrus had groaned and told me, “If you actually succeed in getting close to Leo Shang, you’ll have to remember everything you see and hear.”
“You can’t just give me a little spy camera and some sort of recording device?” I’d asked.
“If Leo Shang catches you with either of those things, he’ll kill you,” Cyrus had told me.
This was a very convincing argument. I didn’t want to be dead, so I was beefing up my memory. It had turned out to be far more work than I’d expected. I had been pulled out of my regular classes and placed in an intensive memory immersion course. For hours each day, I’d memorized random strings of numbers and decks of cards. My instructor, Professor Richmond, had walked me down the city streets and then peppered me with questions about everything I’d seen: What model car was parked closest to the corner? What type of earrings had a mail carrier been wearing? How many people had failed to clean up after their dogs? It had seemed almost impossible at first, but I was already getting better at it, picking up things I never would have noticed about my surroundings before. Like how everyone else at the zoo was dressed.
“Why are you staring at those people?” Mike asked me.
I still needed a bit of work on not being so obvious, however.
“I thought I recognized them,” I said quickly.
Mike stopped walking near a park bench where an old woman sat (black overcoat, red earmuffs, big hairy mole on her chin) and fixed me with a hard stare. “Have you recognized a lot of people at the zoo today? Because you’ve been staring at everyone we’ve passed.”
“No, I haven’t,” I said, even though I had. It occurred to me that Mike had quite strong powers of observation himself.
“You have so. You’ve been acting weird all day. Even weirder than usual.”
“What do you mean, ‘weirder than usual’?”
Mike began ticking things off on his fingers. “The last time you went to Adventureland Mini Golf, you took after some suspicious guy and ended up burning the whole place down. On the one day you were back at school with me, you beat up Trey Patterson and three of his buddies and then vanished. And the one time you told me to sneak onto St. Smithen’s to spring you for a party, I got tackled by a commando squad. They claimed it was only a training exercise, but I know that was a bunch of bull.”
“I realize that all seems kind of weird,” I replied. “But there’s a good explanation for everything.”
“Yeah. Something strange is going on at that science school. And you’re wrapped up in it.”
“Er . . . ,” I said, and then had no idea what to add. Mike had caught me completely off guard by nailing the answer.
Mike waited for two other zoo visitors to pass us—a mother (heavy tan parka, hiking boots, librarian glasses) and son (blue Batman jacket, snow boots, a river of snot running from his nose)—and then whispered, “They’re experimenting on you, aren’t they?”
I’d been preparing myself to be accused of being a spy, so now I was caught off guard again. “What?”
“I mean, it’s a science school, but there’s all this secrecy around it,” Mike explained. “So whatever they’re up to . . . it’s not kosher, right?”
“Um,” I said, not quite sure where this was going. “Maybe.”
“So what do they do to you?” Mike asked, growing intrigued. “Inject you with all sorts of weird chemicals to give you incredible martial arts skills one day and hyper-attentiveness the next?”
I was annoyed that Mike thought I was a human guinea pig, but then I remembered what was known as “Delman’s Law of Opportune Aliases”: If someone mistakenly assumes something about you, it’s much easier to simply let them believe it than to make up something else entirely.
So I said, “Yes. I’m a human guinea pig.”
“I knew it!” Mike crowed, so loudly he startled a passing zookeeper (gray hair, bushy mustache, coveralls smeared with what looked disturbingly like animal poop). Then he lowered his voice again and said, “This explains everything. All your screwball behavior.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Even the commando squad,” Mike pointed out. “Because all these experiments must be super top secret, right? I’ll bet the Pentagon’s involved, cooking up stuff that’ll turn even guys like you into mega-warriors.”
I should have just said yes. But I didn’t. I was growing too upset with the direction this conversation had taken. Although I was under orders to protect the secrecy of spy school, I hated that Mike thought I needed a secret formula to turn me into a warrior. When I’d defeated Trey Patterson—and SPYDER—I’d done it all by myself.
So I asked, “You’ve suspected this the whole time I was at St. Smithen’s?”
“Well, not the whole time. I thought it was just your standard dorky science school for a while. But after the commando attack, I got a little suspicious. Why do you ask?”
“Because when I came back to our old school a few months ago, you told all those girls I was training to be a spy.”
“I did?” Mike asked blankly.
“Yes. You told Elizabeth and Kate Grant and Chloe Appel . . .”
“Oh, right! I did! To impress them. I mean, I couldn’t tell them you were a human science experiment. That would have weirded them out. To be honest, I’m a little weirded out by it. You’re not radioactive or anything, are you?”
“No,” I said curtly. “So you never thought I was training to be a spy?”
Mike burst into laughter. “You? A spy? That’s ridiculous!”
I decided not to push the issue any further. I’d already violated a dozen secrecy protocols. And frankly, the direction of the conversation had grown even more embarrassing. “Yeah,” I said, faking some weak laughter myself. “Imagine me being a spy.”
“You’d be the worst.” Mike snickered. “If anyone gave you a gun, you’d probably shoot yourself in the foot.”
I frowned. Not because Mike was being insulting, but because he was right. On my first day at the school artillery range, I’d almost blown off my own toes. I still didn’t like carrying a gun on a mission. Luckily for me, no one else liked me carrying a gun either.
Mike’s laughter died down as we reached the elephant house. One of the elephants was actually braving the cold (chipped left tusk, three notches in right ear, mud all over its legs). Mike stopped
to watch it. “So what’s this ski trip really about, then? Are you getting some sort of secret medication to improve your balance? Or to make you faster? Or to keep you from getting cold? That’d be pretty cool. You’d never need mittens!”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They never tell us anything ahead of time.”
“Any chance I could tag along?”
“You mean, to ski with us?”
“Yeah. And to get superpowers.”
I looked at Mike curiously. “You mean, you think being a guinea pig would be cool?”
“Better than cool! You wiped out Trey Patterson and all his pals at school. That was amazing! Can anyone get into this program, or does everyone have to be a genius like you?”
“I’m not a genius, Mike. . . .”
“Yes, you are. You’re like Einstein when it comes to math. And I know no one gave you some super-secret formula to make that happen.”
I found myself smiling. The direction of the conversation had gotten much better. “I don’t know if that had anything to do with me being picked. . . .”
“Well, could you put in a good word for me, at least? So I could transfer?”
“You mean, you’d want to leave regular school?”
“Yeah. Middle school sucks.”
“But you’re popular!”
“Big whoop. It’s still middle school. It’s not like anyone’s doing any top-secret experiments on me.”
“That’s not always so awesome. . . .”
“Are they working on anything with radioactive spiders? So that you’ll be able to shoot webs out of your wrists like Spider-Man?”
“Er . . . no. And so you know, spiders don’t shoot webs from their wrists anyhow. If someone really shot webs like a spider, they’d do it from their butt.”
“Oh,” Mike said, sounding daunted. But only for a second. “See? I said you were smart. I’ll bet there’s lots of other cool stuff they’re working on. Like super-strength and X-ray vision and teleportation and the ability to stay clean forever and never have to bathe.”
“Why would the government be interested in having people stop bathing?”
“Water conservation. Plus, it’d be awesome to never have to shower again. So win-win for everyone. Dude, you have to get me into this school. . . .”
“I’ll try, but . . .”
“Or at least see if you can get me on the ski trip. If cost is an issue, I could maybe even work out my own place to stay. I have an uncle in Colorado. . . .”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told him, although I didn’t mean it. Because there was no way I could get Mike enrolled in a top-secret government program that didn’t actually exist. I felt bad about lying to him, although part of me was strangely happy as well. Not about the lying, but the fact that for once, Mike was jealous of me, rather than the other way around. In our entire lives, Mike had been jealous of me only one other time, and that was when he had mistakenly believed I was dating Erica Hale. (A misunderstanding I had never bothered to set straight.)
I was so distracted by all this, I had forgotten about being hyper-attentive. Which was a big mistake. Because I’d missed something important.
And it was going to come back to haunt me in a big way on my mission.
ACCLIMATIZATION
The Ski Haüs
Vail, Colorado
December 26
1530 hours
The town of Vail sat at the bottom of a valley in the Rocky Mountains, smushed between the base of the ski mountain and Interstate 70. The small downtown had a German theme—probably to evoke the European history of skiing—with covered bridges, buildings straight out of a Grimms’ fairy tale, and lots of businesses with unnecessary umlauts in their names. Around this was a sprawl of expensive luxury hotels with fancy spas and heated swimming pools and attentive staffs who catered to the guests’ every whim.
Unfortunately, we weren’t staying in one of those hotels.
Instead, we were staying in the only motel in Vail, the Ski Haüs. It was a ramshackle one-story building with a crooked line of rooms that all opened onto a parking lot, and it sat on the opposite side of the freeway from the ski area, so close to the on-ramp that the whole place shook when trucks rumbled past. The Ski Haüs had been built back when Vail was founded in 1969 and the owners hadn’t sunk another penny into it since. The beds were lumpy, the pipes were balky, the bathrooms smelled funky, and cold air seeped through the cheap windows, rendering the entire place as cold as a meat locker. And yet it was still nicer than our dorms back at spy school.
The only real problem was that we had to share the rooms, rather than having them to ourselves. Which meant I had three roommates: Chip Schacter, Jawaharlal O’Shea, and Warren Reeves. Chip, being two years older, was the biggest, toughest, and sneakiest of us. Jawa was the smartest and the best athlete. Warren wasn’t really a very good spy at all. I’d invited him along only because Zoe said that if I didn’t, we’d never hear the end of it. (He was pretty talented at camouflage, though. It came naturally to him. He was wearing a white outfit that blended in with the snow so well, we’d already lost him twice in the motel parking lot.)
“I call one bed!” Chip exclaimed the moment we entered our room.
“You can’t do that,” Warren pointed out. “There’s only two beds. We have to share them.”
“Fine.” Chip sighed. “I’ll share with you. You can have it during the day and I’ll use it at night.”
“Deal,” Warren said. It wasn’t until they’d shaken hands on it that he realized what he’d just agreed to. “Hey! Wait a minute. . . .”
“Too late. You shook on it.” Chip flopped onto the bed, staking his claim to it.
“Handshakes aren’t legally binding!” Warren protested. “Tell him, Jawa!”
“Technically they are,” Jawa said, then looked to me. “I suppose that means you and I are sharing the other bed.”
“All right.” I was pleased not to have to share with Chip or Warren. Chip was so big, he would have taken up the whole bed, and Warren smelled like old cheese. (Zoe claimed this was because he never did his laundry, but I suspected he had some sort of personal hygiene problem.)
None of us bothered to take off the heavy ski parkas we were wearing. It was too cold in the room for that. There was a small heater by the door, but despite clattering like a car that had thrown a rod, it seemed to be heating only the three inches of air surrounding it.
We’d been traveling the whole day. First we’d taken a plane from Washington to Denver. Economy class, of course, but I hadn’t cared; it was the first plane I’d ever been on. Then we’d boarded a shuttle from the airport, which took us up the winding highway, through the mountains, to Vail. I had spent the whole time on both legs of the trip staring out the window. I’d been awed to see the country passing below me from thirty-five thousand feet above—and I’d been equally awed by the Rocky Mountains from ground level. The previous summer I’d thought that the mountains of West Virginia were impressive (although I’d been a bit too busy running for my life to fully appreciate them). However, those were mere speed bumps compared to the Rockies, which were far more massive and beautiful than I could have ever imagined. I’d seen plenty of pictures of them before, but those hadn’t come close to doing the mountains justice.
Jawa set his suitcase on the bed and unzipped it, revealing a neatly arranged selection of ski clothes. Jawa was exceptionally well organized; he had separate, clearly labeled plastic bags for socks, gloves, sweaters, and thermal underwear.
Chip, on the other hand, appeared to have wadded all of his clothes into a ball and then crammed it into a duffel bag that was two sizes too small. Two of the seams had split en route, forcing Chip to repair them with duct tape.
“I can’t thank you enough for inviting me on this,” Jawa told me, carefully arranging his underwear in the bureau. “As if it weren’t amazing enough to be on my first assignment, I also get a free ski vacation out of it!”
“Yeah,”
Chip echoed. “You wouldn’t believe how jealous everyone else back at school was when I told them I was going.”
I turned to him, aghast. “You weren’t supposed to tell anyone. This mission is top secret!”
“Relax,” Chip told me. “They already knew. It’s a school for spies. Nothing stays a secret there for long.” He rolled off the bed and unzipped his overstuffed duffel bag. Clothes erupted from it with such force that a pair of boxer shorts sailed across the room and nailed Warren in the face.
Warren screamed in horror, stumbled backward over his own suitcase, and collapsed on the floor.
“It’s not really supposed to be a vacation,” I warned them. “Erica says our lives could be at risk.”
Chip laughed and shrugged this off. “Erica always thinks her life is at risk. Remember last year when she got all worked up about us having a mole in the school?”
“Um . . . there was a mole,” I reminded him. “And our lives really were in danger. I almost got killed. Twice.”
“Oh, yeah,” Chip recalled. “That’s right. Hey, I wonder if anyone will try to kill us this time.”
“I hope so!” Jawa said excitedly. “That’d be amazing!”
“Assuming they’re unsuccessful,” Warren pointed out.
Chip pegged him in the face with another pair of boxers. “Well, duh. No one wants a successful attempt made on their life, you nitwit.”
“What if it happened on the slopes?” Jawa asked, his excitement ratcheting up a few notches. “And we got to have an honest-to-goodness ski chase? How fantastic would that be?”
“It’d be the best,” Chip agreed. “Warren, stop playing with my underwear, you pervert.” He snatched the boxers Warren had just removed from his head and tossed them into a drawer, along with a handful of random socks and gloves.
“You really think you could outrun someone on skis?” I asked them.
“Definitely,” Jawa replied confidently. “I’ve been skiing ever since I was a kid.”
“Me too,” Chip agreed. “Just let Leo Shang try to mow me down out there. I’ll leave him in the dust.”