"So!" said ter Borcht, coming toward us. "I vass verry disappointed dat you are not dead by now!"
"Vee feel de same vay about you!" I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
His eyes narrowed. Really, sometimes I impress even me.
"But I don't tink I vill haf to vait dat much longer," he said. "Maybe by dinner, yah? In de meantime, some people vant to talk to you."
"This oughtta be good," I whispered.
"Five bucks says they're scientists," Total whispered back.
"No kidding."
The doors swung open behind us, and a team of five people walked in. They were Chinese? I wasn't sure.
"Tsk," said Total. "Last season's white lab coats. So tacky."
"How can you tell?" I asked, not bothering to lower my voice.
"This year's has smaller pockets and wider lapels. Their coats are so...I don't know. Revenge of the Nerds?"
The five Asian whitecoats looked confused, and ter Borcht practically had steam coming out his ears.
"Enuff!" he snapped, clapping his hands together hard. "Dey vill ask you qvestions. You vill answer. Are ve clear?"
"Clear as pea soup!" I said.
If ter Borcht could have hit me, he would have. I guess he didn't want to do it in front of the Clean Team.
Instead, purple in the face, he stalked behind his desk and sat down, angrily shuffling papers. The Clean Team came closer, looking at us curiously, as if we were a zoo exhibit. Gee, I haven't felt like that before.
We stayed quiet, but inside I was getting more and more tense. I could take all five of these yahoos out by myself, I thought. And ter Borcht too, as a bonus. Not to mention the Flyboy guards, guns and all. What stopped me? My collar. For all I knew, all he had to do was press a button, and I would drop to the ground, electrocuted.
The Asian scientists talked softly among themselves. I remembered hearing that some country had wanted to buy us, to use as weapons somehow. I know, I know, it sounds totally loony, a child wouldn't believe it, but you have no idea how incredibly stupid the war guys can be.
Slowly the whitecoats walked around me, Nudge, and Angel, seeming to marvel at how incredibly lifelike we were. Total they ignored completely. When they looked at Ari, they couldn't disguise their dismay. I'd gotten so used to his appearance that it didn't register on me anymore. Ari didn't look human, didn't look like an Eraser. He just looked like a mistake.
His face flushed as he caught their expressions, and I felt really sorry for him. He'd gone from being a cute three-year-old kid to being a hulking patchwork monster within four short years. He knew what he looked like, knew he was dying, and he didn't understand why any of it had happened.
101
"Take a picture, it'll last longer," I told the whitecoats, and they almost jumped when I spoke, staring at me with new curiosity.
"Ah, hallo," one guy said in heavily accented English. "We will ask you some questions, okay?"
I rolled my eyes, and they murmured excitedly among themselves.
"You have a name, yes?" he said, pen ready over his clipboard.
"Yes," I said. "My name is seven-five-nine-nine-three-nine-ex-dash-one. Junior." I heard ter Borcht hiss over at his desk, but he stayed out of it.
The whitecoat looked at me in confusion, then turned to Nudge. "What is your name?"
Nudge thought. "Jessica," she decided. "Jessica Miranda Alicia Tangerine Butterfly." She looked pleased with her name, and smiled at me.
The whitecoats murmured among themselves again, and I heard one of them whisper, "Butterfly?"
They turned to Angel. "We will call you Little One," the leader said, obviously deciding to dispense with the whole confusing name thing.
"Okay," Angel said agreeably. "I'll call you Guy in a White Lab Coat." He frowned.
"That can be his Indian name," I suggested.
One of the other ones spoke up. "Tell us about your sense of direction. How does it work?" They all looked at me expectantly.
"Well, it's like I have a GPS inside me," I told them. "One of the talking ones. I tell it where I want to go, and it tells me, Go twenty miles, turn left, take Exit Ninety-four, and so on. It can be pretty bossy, frankly."
Their eyes widened. "Really?" said one.
"No, you idiot," I said in disgust. "I don't know how it works. I just know it has an unfailing ability to point me in the opposite direction of a bunch of boneheads."
Now they looked a little irritated. I gave them another, say, five minutes before they cracked and this interview came to an exciting end.
"How high can you fly?" one asked abruptly.
"I'm not sure. Let me check my tummy altimeter." I looked down and pulled up my sweatshirt a couple inches. "That's funny. It was here this morning..."
"As high as a plane?" Guy in a White Lab Coat snapped.
"Higher," said Nudge. They whirled on her.
"Higher than a plane?" one asked eagerly.
Nudge nodded confidently. "Yep. We can go so high that we can't even hear the rubber band making the little propeller go around-thwip, thwip, thwip." She made a circling motion with one finger. She frowned. "You meant a toy plane, right?"
Ter Borcht exploded to his feet. "Enuff! You vill get novere vis dese failures!"
"Now, now, Borchy," I said. "These nice people came all this way to talk to us. They know we can fly really high. They know we can always find our way, even in the dark. They know we can go faster than, like, a hundred miles an hour. I'm sure they want to know more about us." Let's just dangle a carrot and see what they do, I thought. It would be my little science experiment.
The five whitecoats were busy scribbling down these tidbits. Ter Borcht, looking furious, sat down heavily.
"You know, Borchy," I said in a loud whisper, "you might want to lay off the fried foods." I patted my stomach, then pointed to his much, much bigger one. I winked at him and then faced the questioners seriously. "I guess you guys also know that we need lots of fuel to keep going. Every two hours. Stuff like milkshakes, doughnuts, chicken nuggets, steak, french fries, uh..."
"Hamburgers," said Angel. "And carrot cake and pastrami and, um, French bread and-"
"Waffles," said Nudge. "And baked potatoes with cheese and bacon. And more bacon by itself. And peanut butter sandwiches and Snickers bars and root beer an'-"
"Hoagies," said Ari in his rusty voice. They looked at him, startled, as if they hadn't figured him capable of speech.
Then the five whitecoats huddled and talked excitedly among themselves while I wiggled my eyebrows at my flock and got hopeful about a major snack headed our way.
"You don't need to eat," ter Borcht said more calmly. "You are dying soon anyvay."
The head whitecoat went over to him and talked, and ter Borcht started looking angry again. I heard him say, "No! It's too late."
"Why can't you get into their heads?" I whispered very softly to Angel. "Make 'em see ants everywhere or something."
"I don't know," Angel said, disappointed. "I just feel...shut out. It's like I start to get in and then I get pushed out again."
"Now I'm really hungry," Nudge whispered.
"Me too," said Ari.
"Me three," whispered Total. "I'm ready to eat one of them."
The rest of us made "eew" faces, but then the door to the lab opened, and everyone turned to look.
It was Mom. And frankly, she didn't look that happy to see me.
102
Mom-Marian Janssen-greeted the Chinese scientists warmly, so I figured they were offering her a big chunk of change to buy us as weapons.
"Are you finding out the information you need?" she asked. Ter Borcht snorted loudly over at his desk, and she cast him a glance.
"Are they cooperating?" Marian asked the room in general.
"What do you think?" I asked, just as Guy in a White Lab Coat said, "No."
Marian took out a PDA. "I told you I had much of this information, but I understood that you wanted to interview them yourselves. Now, what do you need to know?"