“Uh, my job is to observe and I’m clearly observing something very messed up,” Jackson said.
Flinch stepped to the window and let out a gasp. “Pufferfish. Are you seeing what we’re seeing?”
Jackson heard Ruby’s voice crackle in his head. “Robot piñatas.”
“Piñatas as in plural?” the hyper boy asked.
“Yes, there’s a dozen or so flying all over the house. Something’s coming out of them. OK, that’s a missile launcher. Get everyone to safety!”
There was a terrible explosion, and the window Jackson and Flinch were standing in front of shattered.
“I’ve got to help the others,” Flinch said as he reached into his pocket, took out a candy bar, and devoured it. “Braceface, your only job is to stay here and keep the doctor safe. No matter what happens, stay with the doctor.”
“What if we’re attacked by killer piñatas?”
Jackson never got his answer. The sugar was coursing through Flinch, and a smile spread across his face. He shouted, “I am mighty!” and a moment later he leaped out the broken window.
“My daughter!” Dr. Munoz said.
“She’ll be safe,” Jackson said. “There are six of us here. Just stay with me. The team will handle this.”
“I’m going to get my daughter.” Dr. Munoz raced out of the room, his files clutched in his hand.
“Dude, come back here!” Jackson cried out, but it was clear that the doctor wasn’t listening. He scooped up the nervous guinea pig and shoved it in his pocket. Then he focused on Ruby’s face. “Hello?”
Ruby’s voice rang in his ears. “What is it, Braceface? We’re kind of busy fighting evil candy containers.”
“You told me to observe, so I thought I would tell you I’m observing Dr. Munoz running in your direction,” Jackson said.
Ruby groaned. “Stop him!”
“So, you’re giving me permission to get involved?”
Ruby roared.
“Good. By the way, he’s worried about his daughter. If you see a girl carrying a stick, keep her safe. And do yourself a favor. Take the stick away from her. Jackson out.”
“Code names only, Braceface.”
“Stop calling me that,” Jackson said as he raced after Dr. Munoz. He turned a corner and found the scientist cowering on the floor, files scattered at his feet, with a flying piñata hovering overhead. The machine’s red eyes turned the dark hallway a creepy crimson, and its missile launchers hummed eagerly by its side.
Jackson stopped in his tracks. “Doctor, everything is going to be OK. I want you to get behind me. Whoa. Not so fast, just very calmly.”
The piñata followed the doctor’s every movement.
“OK, now, let’s back around this corner,” Jackson said.
Before they could take a single step, the piñata’s red eyes blinked, something inside it started to whir, and smoke billowed out of its back. Before Jackson could react, it launched a missile straight for his head.
His braces swirled in his mouth, and in a flash they were morphing and twisting to create a large, round shield. The missile hit the shield, which deflected the blast and sent it back toward the robot. A moment later the robot, and most of the wall behind it, was on fire. Unfortunately, the files with the schematics inside went up in flames as well.
Jackson had no time to be upset. He dragged the doctor down the hall and out the front door. Unfortunately, another piñata was waiting on the lawn. Jackson could already feel his braces changing. A long lobster claw reached out of his mouth, grabbed the piñata by the neck, and cut it in half. The evil red light of its eyes flickered to black.
Jackson and the doctor moved across the lawn. “I have to save Elizabeth!” Munoz cried as he pulled away from Jackson. “I won’t leave without her.”
“Doctor, it’s not safe here. The others are looking for her. I’m sure she’s fine,” Jackson said.
That’s when the door on the nearby delivery van swung open and a certain platinum blonde goon stepped out. The Hyena had a grin on her face until she saw Jackson.
“You!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing this guy from killer robots. Are these piñatas yours?”
The Hyena smiled proudly.
“He’s under my protection, Mindy,” Jackson said.
The Hyena scowled. “Does everyone know my name?”
“You’ll have to kill me to get at him,” Jackson said, mustering all his bravery.
“Hmmm,” the Hyena said as she reached in the van and took out two silver sai with jagged points. “Well, I’m only being paid for the one kill, but a girl’s got to do what she’s got to do to get ahead.”
She swung the sai at Jackson, but his braces swirled and out popped sai of his own. They blocked the blows before they could do any damage.
“We know you work for Jigsaw. We also know he’s a nutcase.”
“Everyone’s a little quirky,” the Hyena said.
She slashed at Jackson’s shoulder, but his braces blocked the swing.
“He’s behind the kidnappings, right?”
It was then that the Hyena flung down one of her sai and with her free hand threw a punch that knocked Jackson to the ground. While he was struggling against unconsciousness, he felt the goon stamp her boots down on his braces, preventing him from using them to fight back.
“He’s building something, right?” Jackson sputtered. “Do you know what it is?”
“I don’t get paid to know that stuff,” she said. “I’m paid to kill people and you happen to be in the way.”
“You have to listen to me. Jigsaw is building a machine that will destroy the world. He’s insane, Mindy. He’s going to kill billions of people.”
“Not my problem. Now, where were we?” she asked as she pointed her sai at Dr. Munoz. “Oh, yeah, I was sent here to kill you.”
Just then, little Elizabeth Munoz came racing around the corner of the house. Tears were in her eyes as she attached herself to her father’s legs. “Don’t kill my daddy,” she begged the Hyena.
Jackson watched the Hyena study the little girl. Instead of cold-blooded murder, he saw something soft in her eyes. He hadn’t met any contract killers in his life, but he was sure they were supposed to have ice in their veins. The Hyena looked as if she might cry.
“I’m not going to kill your daddy,” she said. “We’re only playing, honey.”
The little girl looked up into the former beauty queen’s face. “Playing?”
The Hyena nodded. “We’re playing Zorro. Your dad was Zorro. I’m the villain. He just threatened to take me to jail and I was about to run away. You know what? Why don’t you and your daddy play now.”
Elizabeth wiped the tears from her eyes. “I like to play imagination.”
The Hyena lowered her sai. “I always did too.”
She stepped off of Jackson’s braces, and they slipped back into his mouth. Before he could get to his feet, the Hyena and her van were disappearing down the dusty road.
As the black helicopter soared over the frozen tundra below, the Hyena reviewed what had happened at Munoz’s house, and she was not happy. For months the Hyena had dreamed of the day when she stopped talking about being an assassin and actually became one, but the kid with the braces had ruined it all. She knew Jigsaw was a nutcase, but had managed to find a way to tolerate the idea. What she couldn’t stand was a liar. Jigsaw’s master plan wasn’t about taking over the world—it was about destroying it. She knew Jigsaw was building some kind of doomsday weapon, but she had assumed he’d use it to hold the world hostage. Mad-genius types never used their weapons. They just tried to scare the willies out of people so they’d cough up a ransom. But if what the kid had said was true, Jigsaw was planning something so … so … so diabolical. Mass murder was not why she had gotten into her line of work. Trained assassins killed people one at a time.
When the helicopter landed at the fortress, Dumb Vinci was waiting.
“Is it don
e?”
She nodded.
Dumb Vinci grinned, revealing a mouth full of broken and missing teeth. “Good. I’ll tell Jigsaw. Let’s get inside.”
She and Dumb Vinci rushed through the snow to the fortress. The wind was cold and vicious. It bit at her bare skin and she nearly knocked the goon down to get inside. Once there she excused herself and raced down the hallway to Jigsaw’s enormous lab. The door was locked so she hurried up the flight of stairs and into the observation room that held his jigsaw puzzle pieces. Looking through the window to the lab below, she saw the satellite dish, still aimed toward the sky. It was attached to solar panels resting on short tables scattered about the room. Clearly, Dr. Badawi had been smarter than Dr. Lunich and had given Jigsaw instructions on how to build her supercharged power source.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” a voice said from behind her. She spun around to find Jigsaw, Dumb Vinci, and twenty hulking goons.
“Yes,” she said. “Amazing.”
Jigsaw smiled. “Putting the world back together takes some very beautiful and powerful tools, Mindy. My machine is perfect in both form and function, and I owe its existence in no small part to you. If it wasn’t for your hard work, I could not have assembled the minds and tools to put all this together. The new world owes you a major debt.”
“So you’re saying I’m to blame for all the people you are going to kill,” the Hyena said.
“Oh, you say it like it’s a bad thing. Mindy, don’t think of it as destroying the world. Think of it as putting it back together. It’s broken and we’re going to glue the pieces back together. In the beginning of our arrangement all I had was my satellite dish. I could use it to move major islands around, but I had no control. I might latch on to Greenland. I might hit the Galapagos. It was very random. Then you brought me Dr. Lunich and his amazing machine. The tractor beam is a marvel, and with a little adaptation I supersized it so that it now links to my satellite dish. This allows me to drag an entire continent wherever I want it. For years all my work seemed hopeless. How can you fix the entire world if you can’t power the machine that puts it all together? That’s when I read about the marvelous Dr. Badawi’s solar panels. Now I have everything I need to put my jigsaw puzzle together.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” the Hyena said. “I never wanted to be a mass murderer.”
“Harsh!” Dr. Jigsaw cried. His feelings seemed to be hurt.
“I was hoping you would want to witness it, but I guess I was wrong.”
The goons cracked their knuckles and grinned eagerly.
“Getting rid of me is not going to be as easy as it looks.”
Unfortunately, it was. The Hyena was completely humiliated as the goons hoisted her down the hall. They carried her into a strange, painfully cold room. It had no floor other than the sheet of ice the fortress was built upon. In the center of the ice was a hole big enough for a large man to slide through into the water below.
“This is my little fishing hole,” Jigsaw said. “I come in here to think, and every once in a while I cast a line and do some fishing. I don’t catch many fish, though. Actually, none. The water is deadly cold—about twenty degrees below zero. The average fish can’t live in such temperatures. In fact, the average man can survive only about ten minutes in this water until his lungs begin to freeze and oxygen can no longer move through them. I suppose a young girl will last considerably less time. Oh, Mindy, I had such high hopes for you. I was going to give you a small part of Australia to rule as your kingdom.”
“That’s what they all say,” the Hyena said.
“Drop her in.”
The goons tossed her into the hole and she slipped under the water. She felt as if a million tiny ice daggers were ripping her flesh to shreds, and it took all of her concentration just to force herself back to the surface. Once she could breathe again, she gasped and shivered.
“Oh, look, we caught one,” Jigsaw said. “Oh, I think she’s too small. Toss her back.”
One of the goons hoisted a block of ice off the ground. It was the exact same shape as the hole. He dropped it down just as the Hyena filled her lungs and forced herself under the water.
She reached up and pounded on the ice, but it was too thick to crack. In a panic, she swam away. She had no idea in which direction she was going, but she knew that moving would keep her alive a little longer. With each stroke she felt the ice above her for openings and looked ahead for any sign of light. Maybe if she swam out from under the fortress, she’d find thinner ice. But her fingers and toes were already feeling numb, and her arms and legs were getting heavy.
She continued her frantic swim until she saw a shimmering light above. She pounded on the ice with her fist, but it had no effect. What could she do? Then it dawned on her. She reached down, unzipped one of her new black boots, and pulled it off her foot. She thrust the sharp heel into the ice. A chunk drifted down to the abyss below. She struck again in the same place. Another chunk, this one much bigger, floated past her face. She hit the ice with all her strength again and again. She was wondering how much longer she could keep going when the last strike caused a crack. She pushed with every ounce of strength and found herself bobbing to the surface. Gasping, she dragged herself out of the water and fell into a coughing fit.
She had to get warm! She got to her feet and spotted the empty black helicopter. Hobbling toward it with her boot in her hand, she climbed inside and started the engines. A blast of warm air filled the cabin as she put on the headset and flipped on the propellers. She found a blanket behind the pilot’s seat and wrapped herself in it. Then she eased the throttle back and the chopper was in the air.
“This little fish got away, Jigsaw,” the Hyena said to herself.
She looked down at the boot in her hand. Its heel was gone, probably stuck back in the broken sheet of ice that had almost been her coffin. She wondered if anyone would notice if she started killing people while wearing sneakers.
Agent Brand paced the room. His jaw was set like stone and his eyes were flashing. Jackson could tell his efforts to take a more “positive tone” had come to a screeching halt. Ms. Holiday watched him with growing anxiety.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We had an unforeseen incident,” Ruby answered.
“You burned Dr. Munoz’s house to the ground on his daughter’s birthday,” Brand said.
“Actually, the fire was started by the robots,” Matilda said.
“Robots shaped like piñatas,” Flinch said.
“OK, see, they were taken by surprise,” Ms. Holiday said.
“On the bright side, Jackson saved his life,” Duncan said.
Jackson beamed with pride. “The Hyena showed up,” Jackson said. “It was the same girl who snatched Dr. Badawi in Cairo.”
“So, Jackson, how did you get close enough to see this Hyena?” Ms. Holiday said. Brand was still pacing. Jackson smiled. “I was protecting Munoz.”
“You were told to observe!” Brand shouted.
Flinch cleared his throat and gave a twist to the knob on his harness. “I told him to stay with the doctor.”
“And who told you to take him to see the doctor?”
Ruby stood up. “I did.”
“And look what happened,” Brand said as he slammed his cane on the desk.
Heathcliff shook his head in disgust. “There’s no one to blame but Braceface. He made a tremendous amount of mistakes and he didn’t follow orders. He’s not one of us. He’s never going to be one of us.”
“That’s not exactly fair,” Duncan said.
“Fine. I’ll prove it to you,” Heathcliff said. “Hey, Braceface! Who’s your favorite Star Trek captain?”
“Uh, Han Solo?”
“See, he’s hopeless.”
“OK, that’s enough bickering,” Ms. Holiday said. “Munoz is still alive and we got the schematics.”
Jackson shook his head. “No, they caught on fire in the attack.”
Ruby leaped to her f
eet. “See, Choppers is right. Braceface has shown the public his upgrades for the third time. He’s not ready to be out there, and I don’t trust his judgment. If you send him out again, I’m going to resign.”
The room grew quiet.
“You really mean that, Pufferfish?” Brand said.
Ruby nodded.
Jackson couldn’t be sure if Ruby was sincere or trying to push him out, but the worry on the team’s faces when she threatened to quit spoke volumes. Pufferfish was much more important to the NERDS than some trainee who kept screwing up.
“Then clean out your locker, agent,” Agent Brand said.
“No! She’s not quitting. I am,” Jackson said.
“No one is quitting,” Ms. Holiday said.
“I’m not wanted here,” Jackson argued. “You don’t trust me, and you probably never will. Even if I did a good job, you guys would never accept me. Maybe I deserve it. I know I was a jerk before, but I’m not anymore. I wish you’d give me a chance … but you won’t. So I give up.”
He threw the words out there, wondering if anyone would argue. In his head he decided that if one person came to his defense, he would stay, but the room was quiet.
He looked at Duncan, but the boy wouldn’t return his gaze.
“Take the braces and the computer chip out. I’m not one of you,” he said at last.
Ms. Holiday looked at Agent Brand. The former spy was leaning on his cane and rubbing his face with his free hand. He looked disgusted and disappointed. He shot Ruby an angry look, then nodded his approval. “Do it.”
Ms. Holiday bit her lower lip and gestured for Jackson to follow her. She led him into the room with the upgrade chair and strapped him to the table. She started to tear up and wiped the corners of her eyes with her cardigan sweater.
“I’m truly sorry, Jackson. I don’t think it’s fair. You’re doing as well, if not better, in the training than anyone on the team. Your time avoiding Duncan’s tetherball is a record.”
“Really? They never told me.” Jackson said.