“My name is Heathcliff Hodges and I’m a spy. Who wants superpowers?”
The kids looked at him as if he were one flapjack short of a stack.
“A little help here, Benjamin?” he begged.
The robot zipped around the room projecting images of Flinch, Pufferfish, Braceface, Gluestick, Wheezer, and Choppers fighting bad guys. “He’s telling the truth.”
All at once, every kid in the school jumped out of their seat and collectively shouted, “I do!”
“Follow me!” Heathcliff cried.
He ran back down the hall and threw his locker door open, shoving kids in one by one.
“Just to be clear, I think this is a terrible idea,” Benjamin said.
Heathcliff smiled. “Benjamin, this is the best idea I have ever had.”
Brand was very unhappy with where and when the time machine had taken him—Nathan Hale Elementary, May 1976. The school was still a construction site. Metal beams hung overhead and huge industrial machines were parked nearby. In a year, the school would open, and the NERDS would be born. But on this day there were no agents, no gadgets, and no fellow spies to help him stop Lisa Holiday.
“You’re too late,” she said. She was standing nearby with a sledgehammer resting on her shoulder.
“Am I?” Brand asked. “What is it you plan on doing?”
“Why, I’m going to destroy this site. I may not be able to erase your precious NERDS agents, but I can still make sure the organization was never born.” She swung the heavy hammer at him. He barely had time to step out of its way.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Because I love you,” he said.
“And you think you can help me? So one day I’ll be better and you and I can … what? Get married? Have a family? Buy a house with a little picket fence and save the world on the weekends? That’s never going to happen, and it’s not because I’m so bad and you’re so good. It’s because I don’t care about you. I never cared about you. You were an assignment and I manipulated you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
She laughed. “You’re a fool. Do you know how many men I’ve done this to? You’re not special.”
The words stung him, but he kept moving toward her. “Even with that mask on, I can see you’re lying. You aren’t bad. You aren’t Miss Information. You’re a librarian who works at a school full of superpowered kids and you bake lousy deserts and worry too much.”
Miss Information buckled over in pain.
“Lisa!”
“These headaches! They confuse me,” she said. Her bitter tone was gone.
“It’s your mind rebelling against what you’ve become,” Brand said. “Let it go, Lisa. Let all of this go.”
“Alex? Please help me, Alex. I’m so confused.”
She reached up and removed her mask. There was the face that made him smile—the face that smoothed his rough edges—but she was in so much pain.
“It’s going to be OK,” he said, taking her into his arms.
He felt her jerk. Instinctively, he snatched her hand. There was a pipe in it.
“I almost got you!” she said with a wicked grin. She swung at him with her fists and he hobbled out of her reach. She leaped into the air with a foot aimed at his neck, but he batted it away and stepped to the side, grabbing the back of her hair and slamming her to the ground.
She hopped to her feet with unexpected agility and karate-chopped his belly. He bent over in agony and fell to avoid another kick, rolling away just as she stomped heeled boots where his neck had been. One boot got so close he had to catch it in his hands before it crushed his windpipe. He fought hard against it, thrusting upward and causing her to do a backflip in midair. She landed safely, but she was far enough away from him so that he had time to stand. He grabbed his cane and waved it at her.
“Is that all you’ve got?” he said.
The taunt sent her charging forward, but when she was close enough, he used the cane to catch her foot. A strong jerk and she was flat on her face. By the growl she let loose he could tell she was frustrated. Yes, get mad. Then you’ll make mistakes.
“Lisa—”
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” she shrieked, racing at him like a runaway train. Her punches were fast and her feet faster. He blocked every attack, but each blow took more and more out of him. She pushed him backward, step-by-step, and finally he lost his footing, falling over a bag of concrete and slamming his head hard on a monkey wrench that was lying on the ground. He tried to stand, but his legs would not cooperate.
Miss Information grabbed a handful of electrical wiring and went to the time machine. She dipped one end of the wire into the ball pit and connected the second to the control panel. At once, a shrieking sound filled the air.
“Your little time machine is nothing more than a wormhole expander. I set it up to tear one into a ragged wound. The result will be a very big bang, sweetie. Once the battery cells overload, it will vaporize this site and stop your headquarters from ever existing.”
Brand cursed his body. Why couldn’t he stand? “Sort of defeats the purpose. If you’re caught in the blast, how will you rule the world? That’s what you want, right?”
She shook her head. “Oh, I’ll be long gone before then.” She pushed a couple of buttons and stepped into the pit, then turned and blew him a kiss. “Don’t look so sad. I think Lisa did love you. If only she were real.”
With what little strength he had, he snatched the monkey wrench and threw it. It slammed into the ball pit’s control panel. Sparks and black smoke filled the air, and the screeching noise got louder and higher in pitch.
The woman screamed in terror. “You’ve reversed the engine! You’ve created a black hole. It’s going to crush me!”
Brand crawled on his hands and knees to reach her. “Take my hand!” he cried, but she couldn’t move from the ball pit. A terrible, crackling energy rose up out of the machine and engulfed her body. She shook in pain.
“Lisa!”
“Alex, I wanted to tell you who I was, but I didn’t really know.”
“You’re Lisa Holiday,” he cried.
“I wanted to be,” she said.
There was a massive shock wave and Ms. Holiday’s body broke into a million tiny flecks of dust. They rose up into the air like dandelion seeds on a summer breeze and drifted over the entire construction site. All that remained was the black mask with the white skull painted on it.
Brand staggered to his feet and approached the ball pit. He gave the control panel a shake. It popped on and off. He pressed some buttons, made a wish, then crawled into the ball pit once more. It might kill him, too, but he had to try.
“No one can stop us!” the thirty-foot-tall Snot Rocket cried. He stomped through the streets, snapping electrical wires with every step. He fired a massive booger at a car. It exploded. The other BULLIES cheered. Each one was as big as Snot Rocket.
Loudmouth opened her mouth and a tornado blasted out of her lungs, ripping apart the street, tearing the roof off a nearby home, and pushing a garage off its foundation.
Thor roared and beat on his chest. His protruding veins were thick with boiling purple blood and his eyes were bulging.
“Anything we want is ours!” Funk shouted. His armpit smell caused a mailbox to ignite and melt. “And no one can stop us!”
“Um, excuse me,” Heathcliff said from far below.
Snot Rocket looked down at the little boy. He was standing in front of a sea of other puny children.
“We’ve come to stop you,” Heathcliff said. He hoped that the giants wouldn’t stomp on him right away.
“Are you sure this is going to work, Hodges?” Benjamin asked. “I don’t want to end up in a recycling bin.”
“I don’t know,” Heathcliff admitted. “I’ve never confronted four superpowered giants before.”