Much to his surprise he landed in an overstuffed chair. An oddly proper voice said, “Welcome to the Playground.”
He was in a large square room as big as a baseball field. The floor was decorated in multicolored ceramic tiles, and the ceiling was held aloft by dozens of marble columns. Each wall was decorated with an elaborate mural dedicated to a different branch of science—biology, physics, geology, and chemistry. Scattered about the room were workstations. Some held computers, others elaborate experiments—vials of chemicals, half-built machines, water tanks. Mounted above all this were the largest television monitors Jackson had ever seen. They were broadcasting scenes from around the world: a man taking money from an ATM with the Eiffel Tower in the background, two men playing dominoes in Red Square, a woman and her son sightseeing at the Great Wall of China. Jackson realized these weren’t television shows, but actual events caught by surveillance cameras around the globe. On several monitors, Jackson could see students from his school walking to class, sleeping at their desks, struggling to climb the rope in the gymnasium. It seemed every inch of Nathan Hale Elementary was under surveillance.
Tearing his attention away from the TVs, Jackson noticed a circular desk sitting on a platform at the center of the room. It was made from some kind of glass, inlaid with tiny computer circuits. Jackson walked over to take a closer look. When he touched the surface of the desk, a tiny blue orb floated out of a hole in the center. It spun like a tornado, then began to emit particles of light. The particles combined to form a three-dimensional picture of a snow-capped mountain range. It was so real, Jackson felt he could dip his hand into the snowmelt rushing down to the river below. He had never seen technology like it in his life. He wondered how the school could afford something this advanced when most of the students shared textbooks.
Suddenly, as if a bell had sounded somewhere, doors swung open around the room and dozens of people dressed in white lab coats and goggles rushed to the workstations. They didn’t seem to notice Jackson.
He watched as a man climbed into a tank of water. He had a tiny green device in his nose and, once he was submerged, it was clear that the device was allowing him to breathe. In another corner of the room, a scientist wearing a bright orange jumpsuit that covered him from head to toe was handed a lit stick of dynamite. Jackson panicked, but when the dynamite exploded, the scientist appeared to be unharmed.
Jackson gaped in wonder as he moved about the room, examining one experiment after another, but his attention finally settled on a scientist working with a pink-nosed guinea pig. She plugged a computer cable into the back of a video monitor. The other end of the cable was inserted into the belly of the furry rodent. At once, the monitor came to life, broadcasting what appeared to be the guinea-pig’s-eye view. A colleague came over to watch.
“I call it the ‘guinea pig camera,’” the proud scientist announced to her colleague. “The team can give one of these to a suspect’s child and it will record anything it sees or hears. Just plug in this cable and it downloads right onto your hard drive!”
The scientist continued her demonstration, aiming the furry animal in all directions. The image stopped on Jackson.
All at once, the scientists turned to face him. “How did you get in here?” one shouted.
“Uh, I’m lost,” he said.
Before he could explain further, a siren went off and a voice announced: “We have an intruder in the Playground. Attention, all agents. We have an intruder in the Playground.”
Jackson had no idea what was happening, but one thing was clear—he had not stumbled into the teacher’s lounge.
STILL HERE, HUH? I WOULD
HAVE BET MONEY YOUR LITTLE
BELLY COULDN’T HANDLE ALL
THE EXCITEMENT. WELL, YOU’RE
BRAVER THAN I THOUCHT.
EAGER FOR MORE? GOOD.
PLEASE PLACE YOUR EYE
ON THE RETINAL SCANNER.
I’M WAITING, PAL. I
KNOW YOU DIDN’T DO IT.
LEVEL 3
ACCESS GRANTED
SEE HOW EASY
IT IS WHEN YOU
COOPERATE?
Each of the scientists the Hyena kidnapped and delivered to the secret lair at the North Pole went through the same process. Henchmen took their clothing and personal possessions and gave them orange prison jumpsuits. They were shoved into tiny cells without windows and told to sit tight until they were needed. They weren’t allowed to use the phone, but they were well fed and even given magazines and books to help them pass the time. At last they were ushered into a large room filled with chalkboards and chairs. Half the chalkboards held a long, intricate equation. Xs and Ys swam through it, and quite a number of question marks. The henchmen forced chalk into the scientists’ hands and instructed them to fill in the missing numbers and finish the equation. They worked day and night, though it was clear none of them was sure exactly what the equation was or what it might solve.
It was during those long afternoons that the Hyena started to see Dr. Jigsaw’s diabolical nature. What kind of black-hearted soul forced a person to do math problems? She remembered the math teacher she had had in the third grade who insisted that someday she would need long division. Three years later she was still waiting. But Jigsaw’s evil went far beyond any math teacher’s, because of how he reacted to the scientists’ progress. Every few hours he would emerge from behind a locked door in the back of the room and study the equation. Sometimes he would get very excited and praise his hostages, but more often he would get violently angry, snatch an eraser, and obliterate days of work right before their eyes. The first few times this happened, the scientists took it in stride, but by the tenth time they were in tears.
The Hyena couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the scientists. They all looked distraught and exhausted. But her sympathy quickly turned to anger. She wasn’t supposed to have compassion! She was a professional assassin. She was supposed to have veins clogged with ice and a heart as black as coal. Contract killers didn’t sit around worrying about their victims. She had to get herself under control. Sympathy was very unprofessional.
Eventually, one of the braver scientists stepped forward. “Dr. Jigsaw, this would be easier if you would tell us what this equation is meant to solve.”
Jigsaw rolled back on his heels. “It’s not obvious?”
The scientists shook their heads.
Jigsaw let out an exasperated sigh, grabbed a stick of chalk, and drew a picture of the Earth. At the top he drew a massive satellite dish and on each of the major continents he drew arrows pointing toward the other continents. The Hyena had no idea what any of it meant, but once Jigsaw’s drawing was complete, the kidnapped scientists let out a collective gasp.