Miss Information pulled Tessa to her feet and dragged her to a mirror. “Let’s see you do it.”
“Do what?”
“The thing! The power! With your face!”
“I don’t know what that machine did to me, and I certainly don’t know how to do anything,” Tessa snapped.
“Geez, do I have to do everything around here?” Miss Information cried. With lightning-fast hands, she reached over and pulled on Tessa’s nose.
“Hey!” Tessa cried. “What are you, seven years old? Go play Got Your Nose with someone else!”
Miss Information pointed at the mirror. “Look.”
Tessa screamed. Loudly. Her nose was now where her chin used to be!
“Crazy, huh?” Miss Information said. She stood over Tessa’s shoulder, marveling at the grotesque change. “I read the data on your nanobytes. Those little robots let you manipulate your face anyway you want. You can actually sculpt your skin to look like other people, too. Try it!”
“Who?”
“Who cares? Just pick someone!”
Tessa closed her eyes and thought about the people in her life. Then her hands went to work, twisting and turning her features as if they were Play-Doh. Her nose, lips, skin—even her eyeballs—were all soft and pliable, and, oddly enough, all the pulling and twisting didn’t hurt. When she was done, she took a step back and looked in the mirror. Her math teacher, Mr. Donaldson, stared back at her. His beady eyes and scowling mouth were perfect matches. She even duplicated his famous curled lip of contempt and the single ever-present nose hair that waved like a flag from his right nostril.
She screamed again.
“That’s amazing, Tessa!” Ms. Holiday said. “Try someone else.”
She did as she was told, filled with both dread and curiosity. In quick succession she turned herself into Secret Service Agent Dan Holbrooke, Holly the White House chef, and even George Washington from the portrait that hung in the Oval Office. Her nanobytes were incredible. Not only had they turned her face into clay, they allowed her to adapt her eye color, skin tone, and even hair color.
Miss Information clapped happily. “With a little practice you should be able to do your whole body. You can change your height and weight—why, you might even be able to reproduce smells.”
A few quick twists and Tessa had her old face back. “Um, I’m going to pass.”
“What? Best power ever!” Miss Information cried.
“It’s disgusting. I want something else.”
“The upgrade machine takes your greatest strength and makes it stronger. This is perfect for you! Don’t tell me you wanted to fly or something dumb like that?”
“Flying wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Yeah, freezing to death while bugs fly into your mouth,” the woman said. “That’s horrible. Any kid with an egg can knock you out of the sky. Tessa, with your face you can be anyone you want to be. Think of the trouble you can cause! You could rob a bank by pretending to be the branch manager. You could steal a jet by changing your face to look like the pilot!”
“How is this going to get my dad’s attention?”
“Imagine what you could do if you were the president of the United States.”
Tessa looked in the mirror and twisted her features until she looked just like her father. A million naughty ideas floated into her head. She could stop him from being reelected, and then she’d have him all to herself.
“I see you’re getting it,” Miss Information said, giggling. She clamped a bracelet onto Tessa’s wrist and snapped it closed. “While you were out I had the science team build this hologram machine. It will project any set of clothes you can imagine onto your body and totally help sell your transformations. Now, you said you wanted to get your dad’s attention, right? Let’s get started.”
“Now?”
“There’s no time like the present,” Miss Information said as she led Tessa out of her room and through a maze of hallways. They emerged into a space as big as a private plane hangar, but there were no planes parked inside, just a rusty yellow school bus. Standing in front of it was her team—the BULLIES. She looked them up and down and couldn’t help frowning. These kids were the biggest bunch of misfits she’d ever seen.
“Ta-da!” Miss Information said. “I call it ‘The School Bus.’”
“It is a school bus,” Tessa said.
“Not exactly,” Miss Information replied. She clicked a button on her key chain and the wheels folded upward replaced by rockets. Soon, the ancient bucket of rust was hovering five feet off the ground.
Tessa shrugged. “It’s got potential.”
“There’s more! BULLIES, hop on board,” Miss Information said.
The children boarded the bus one by one. A strange man sat behind the steering wheel. He was a mountain of muscles with crazy white hair, a wide chin, a dead eye, and a silver hook for a hand. He was also wearing white orthopedic shoes and a smock with bright blue flowers on it.
“Kids, this is the lunch lady.”
“Lunch lady? He’s a bus driver wearing a muumuu,” Loudmouth shouted.
“He’s not a lady, either,” Funk said.
“Actually, my name is the Antagonist, but—”
“YOU’RE THE LUNCH LADY!” Miss Information roared. “DON’T MAKE ME REGRET BREAKING YOU OUT OF FEDERAL PRISON, PAL. I CAN PUT YOU BACK THERE IN A FLASH. YOU GOT IT?”
The man with the hook lowered his head and nodded. “I got it,” he said quietly.
Tessa watched the woman’s outburst with concern. This was the second unpredictable rant she’d witnessed. Miss Information was obviously mentally ill—people didn’t wear masks with skulls on them because they were healthy—but just how crazy was she? A moment later she found out. Her new boss sat in a center seat next to a scarecrow wearing a black tuxedo. She cuddled up to it as if it were her boyfriend.
“This is so awkward,” Miss Information said in a conspiratorial tone.
“What?” Tessa said, trying to pretend everything was fine.
“The lunch lady and I used to be engaged. That’s before I met Alex here,” she said, caressing the straw man’s hay-filled face.
“Where to?” the lunch lady shouted.
“We’re going to Tessa’s house—1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. You might have heard of it. It’s called the White House.”
Tessa swallowed hard. Her greatest wishes were about to come true, and she owed it all to a lunatic in a mask smooching a scarecrow. She suddenly felt very nauseous.
When Ruby and the principal got back to school, they were rushed on board the School Bus. The platform the superjet was resting upon was already rising through the gym floor before either of them was given a clue as to the nature of the emergency.
“Does anyone want to tell me where we’re going?” the principal said as the rocket shot through the open ceiling. “So I know where to steer this thing?”
“Put in coordinates for Lake Mead, Nevada,” Matilda said. “We’re going to the Hoover Dam. And it wouldn’t hurt to floor it.”
“What’s happening at the Hoover Dam?” Ruby asked.
“Robot destruction!” Flinch bellowed while beating on his chest.
“I suppose we can blame them on Miss Information?” Ruby asked.
“Take a look for yourself. Our surveillance team caught this fifteen minutes ago,” Duncan said. He typed something on the mission deck keyboard, and in the monitors Ruby saw men unloading heavy wooden crates from a truck parked on a dusty road near a lake. When they opened one of the crates, something from a science fiction movie hopped out. It was about the size of a sheepdog but strutted around on two chicken-like hind legs. Its head was oval and black with a white skull pattern. It shrieked, flew twenty feet into the air on metallic wings, then fell back to the ground with a thud.
“Chickenbots,” Duncan said. “There’s ten of them, and they’re marching toward the dam.”