Killer Spirit (14 page)

“Cheer Scout cookies?” I asked.

“Cheer Scout cookies,” the voice said. “This is your cover. As of 1500 hours this afternoon, all five teams will commence fund-raising at strategic locations spread throughout Bayport, specifically, large, commercial buildings.”

It took me a second to realize that one of the locations in question was the building that housed Ross’s lab. I must have been playing this game for too long now, because in a twisted way, this whole cookie thing made sense. If we were all doing “fund-raising,” then the fact that a subset of us chose to do it at Ross’s lab wouldn’t raise suspicions. Clever.

“Girls, I must stress the incredibly sensitive nature of this case. We must acquire the weapon prototype that Ross has constructed, replace it with a decoy, and get out without raising suspicions. Due to the danger involved in penetrating Ross’s lab, we’ve designated the active part of this mission as eighteen and over. We’ll be sending two operatives in; the rest of you will be acting as decoys across town.”

Eighteen and over meant that the CIA wasn’t comfortable handing this part of the case over to minors, which meant that dangerous was an understatement. The last time a case had been given this designation, Zee and Brooke had been caught in a crossfire in Libya.

“Unfortunately, however,” the voice continued, “after a deeper analysis of Ross’s technological capabilities, psychological profile, and security detail, the task force assigned to this case has recommended that at least one of the operatives sent on the primary mission have a strong technological background, superior fighting skills, and…errrrr…”

Chloe preened, sure the voice was describing her.

“The psychological profile revealed that our best chance at countering Ross’s paranoia is to go in with someone young, female, and unintimidating.”

As far as I could tell, that description fit each and every one of us.

“Specifically, it has come to light that Ross is more likely to implicitly trust a young female with a particularly small chest.”

I didn’t even want to know how they’d come to that psychological conclusion. Nor did I want to know why everyone in the room was suddenly looking at my breasts.

Or lack thereof.

“I’m in,” I said, ignoring the fact that I’d gotten the coveted assignment based on the flatness of my chest.

“So am I,” Brooke said. “Assuming we only need one operative with that last…special attribute.”

Brooke was admirably trying to be diplomatic about the boob issue.

“I’m sending through all of the information you girls need,” the voice said. “Remember, get in, acquire the weapon, replace it with the decoy, get out. Stealth is the name of the game, girls.”

And with that, the screen went dark, and the phone line went dead.

“You heard the man,” Brooke said, visibly relieved that we’d managed to keep this mission a Squad operation. “We meet back here for seventh period, and at fifteen hundred hours, Operation Cheer Scout begins.”

CHAPTER 21

Code Word: Envy

When you spend your morning on speakerphone with the CIA, the normal ups and downs of high school just don’t quite carry the same punch. During first period, three people asked me where I’d bought my shoes. Halfway through my English class, we had a pop quiz, because the teacher, in all of her wisdom and glory, had noticed the fact that no one was paying attention to a word that she said. When I went to the bathroom in between English and chemistry, I noticed a somewhat unflattering message about me scrawled across the bathroom wall.

Then, just as I was heading back from the bathroom, I ran into Jack, and the two of us may or may not have staged a reenactment of our kiss from the day before. As a result, I discovered that the only thing that stacked up to the kind of morning I’d had was the feeling of Jack’s lips on mine. The warmness that spread up my spine and over my entire body was enough to make me consider the possibility that I’d been missing out by beating guys up instead of making out with them all these years.

Because I clearly have mental problems (or as Zee would say, “intimacy issues”), the fact that anyone could have this kind of effect on me was enough to make me lash out and slug Jack in the stomach, but this time, he was ready for me, and without a word, he sidestepped the punch. “Nice try,” he murmured, nuzzling me as he took my hands in his. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that violence isn’t the answer?”

“No.” I glowered at him, trying to resist the power of his nuzzles. There were a million reasons I shouldn’t have been kissing him, and only one that made me want to do it again.

He turned his head so that his lips were near my neck. I could feel his breath on my skin as he spoke. “Me neither.” He kissed me again, softly, his lips just barely grazing mine. “But sometimes, Ev, it pays to play nice.”

I’m sure something must have happened in my fourth period, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what. By the time lunch rolled around, the entire school knew about The Kiss, Part Deux, and I was starting to think that if I was going to be helplessly girly and turn to Toby mush whenever Jack “played nice,” it might be to my benefit to find a less public venue for our next rendezvous.

Brooke and Chloe apparently concurred, and they demonstrated this agreement by spending the first half of our lunch hour glaring at me in their own, individual it-doesn’t-look-like-we’re-glaring-but-we-really-are ways. Given the fact that Brooke and I were going on an over-eighteen mission in less than three hours, I had to infer that this probably wasn’t a good thing.

“Jack, you dawg!” Chip greeted Jack in a way that reminded me why I’d spent most of my life beating guys up instead of making out with them. “Is she a wildcat, or what?”

Jack let his popularity shield drop just long enough for a single-sentence response. “Chip, you’re an idiot.”

“Whatever, man,” Chip said, perfectly affable. “You dawg!”

Tara leaned over to whisper in my ear. “You might want to switch to SDA mode,” she advised. “Brooke probably won’t kill you for the PDA, but Chloe might.”

I didn’t have to ask what PDA was, but I tried to sort out the other acronym.

The barest hint of a grin flicked across Tara’s face at my puzzlement. “Stealth Displays of Affection.”

Based on the looks the twins—our resident flirting experts—were giving me, I could only conclude that as soon as we wrapped up with Operation Cheer Scouts, there might be an SDA tutorial in my future.

Not nearly soon enough, the topic of conversation changed to a teen slasher movie coming out the next weekend, and I felt a piece of paper being shoved unceremoniously into my lap under the table. In an attempt to prove that I could be stealthy, I unwrapped it and read without anyone else at the table noticing.

I need to talk to you.

For a note from one of my Squadmates, it wasn’t very high-tech. No codes. No invisible ink. But then again, the message wasn’t exactly the stuff that national security was made of. Girls across the country probably passed notes like this every day. I scanned the table, trying to figure out who’d sent it to me, and when my eyes landed on Chloe, I groaned internally.

She was staring straight at me, and her not-a-glare glare changed into something else. She held my eyes for a moment, and then spoke. “OMG. I totally forgot to pick up the banner paint, and we were going to make banners for Friday’s game at practice today. I’m going to go see if Mr. J will let us sneak out to pick some up. You want to come with, Toby?”

I really didn’t, but since Chloe had never voluntarily spent time in my presence, I got the distinct feeling that whatever she wanted to talk to me about, it was big.

“Sure!” I tried to match her peppy tone. “I’ve always wanted to pick out banner paint.”

I could see Brooke repressing an eye roll at my response, and even I had to admit that it wasn’t exactly one hundred percent believable, but if any of the guys at the table thought it was strange, they didn’t comment on it. Even Jack just looked at me, a half smile on his face, like he knew that banner paint was seriously up there on the list of things I couldn’t have cared less about, but wasn’t going to blow my cover, because he was the master of pretending to care about things that didn’t matter himself.

As Chloe and I walked away from the table, part of me had to wonder whether I fell into that category, or if I was the only thing in Jack’s charmed life that didn’t.

“Arrrrr, mateys! It be homecoming season, and we be the homecoming pirates.”

Dear God, I thought in silent prayer, when I turn around, please don’t let that be Noah.

“Arrr!” a dozen more voices chorused.

I turned around, and there was Noah, along with Chuck and the slew of freshman boys who’d been at my house that morning. All of them were dressed up like pirates, and three of them were actually standing on a table in the middle of the cafeteria. Noah brandished a makeshift sword.

“Who you be voting for, mateys?” he asked his pirate followers.

In what I can only conclude was the product of a great deal of rehearsal, the other boys chorused in unison, “The homecoming pirates be voting for Toby Klein. She be worth her weight in pirate’s gold. Arrrrrr!”

What
was my brother thinking? Did he honestly think making a complete fool out of himself would encourage anyone to vote for me? That was insane. Or, at least, I hoped it was insane, because if by some miracle Noah’s pirate act actually convinced so much as a single person to write my name down on that ballot, I was going to stuff not one, but both of my poms into a part of his anatomy where the sun doesn’t shine.

“Arrrr!”

To her credit, Chloe didn’t so much as glance over her shoulder at the boys, and a large portion of the student body followed her lead. Still, I couldn’t help but notice as we left the cafeteria that a disturbing amount of freshmen and sophomores were cheering Noah on.

As Chloe and I walked toward the vice-principal’s office, the silence between us was nearly tangible, but I finally broke it.

“If there was a way to deport my brother to Antarctica, you’d tell me, right?” That was about as much of a peace offering as I could give her. If we were going to be stuck in the same room for any amount of time, I preferred to get rid of any latent hostilities first.

“If you win homecoming queen,” Chloe snipped, “I’ll deport him myself.”

Something about the expression on her face convinced me that she wasn’t joking, and I spent several seconds hoping that senior members of the Squad didn’t actually have a way of deporting people, because I couldn’t actually let someone ship my brother off the continent.

Chloe rolled her eyes and snorted simultaneously. “Gullible much?”

Chloe’s tone reconfirmed two things for me. First, that when it came to me, hostility was Chloe’s middle name, and second, that my first impression of this whole homecoming situation had been entirely accurate.

Things were definitely going to get ugly.

On the plus side, though, talking Mr. J into excusing us from our last two classes turned out to be a piece of cake. After all, heaven forbid we run out of banner paint!

“You do realize how twisted this is, right?” I didn’t particularly want to talk to Chloe, but once we were safely away from the office, I couldn’t keep the opinion to myself.

“Don’t look a gift vice-principal in the mouth,” Chloe said glibly. Almost belatedly, she rolled her eyes, as if she’d remembered at the last second who she was talking to and that an eye roll was the mandated response. “But, yes, for the record, I do get that this is ridiculous. We all do. We’re not stupid.” Chloe paused as the two of us entered the Quad, and when she continued, her voice was slightly less blatantly nasty and marginally more condescending. “Look at it this way—if Jacobson didn’t have a job at Bayport, he’d have a job somewhere else, and the cheerleaders at that school probably wouldn’t be skipping class to deal with terrorist threats.”

That was, in all likelihood, an understatement.

All things considered, though, it was a miracle that none of the other parents had ever complained. Then again, if any of the parents did complain—about their kids not making the varsity squad, about the blatant favoritism in the school, about the fact that there wasn’t a single noncheerleader nominated for homecoming court—the Big Guys Upstairs would probably just pull some strings and have that parent transferred out of the Bayport school district, the same way they’d somehow managed to have me transferred in.

The longer I spent on the Squad, the more I started thinking that maybe the paranoid people in the world had it right. Big Brother was totally watching.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked. “Why did you need to talk to me?”

Chloe didn’t say anything. She just kept right on walking through the Quad, up a flight of stairs, through a labyrinth of hallways, and into her lab. “Don’t touch anything.”

Like I was going to mess up her precious inventor’s lair. Then my eyes lit upon something that looked vaguely like some kind of microscanner, and Chloe’s voice broke into my techno-daydreams.

“Let me rephrase that.
Don’t touch anything
.”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “What do you want?”

Chloe reached over to her desk and picked up a thick stack of papers. “It’s Ross’s dissertation,” she said. “Brooke doesn’t know I have it, and neither do our superiors, but I’m not letting the two of you go into this mission blind because they don’t feel like telling you what you’re up against.”

I wasn’t sure what surprised me more: the fact that Chloe was so adamant about protecting us, or that she’d had the exact same idea I had about finding a copy of Ross’s dissertation.

“It wasn’t easy,” she told me. “He originally submitted it for publication, but retracted it only a few weeks later. It was like he suddenly realized he could make a lot more money off of this thing underground than above. He wiped every trace of it off of the web, but the university still had a copy of it in their database.”

“You hacked it?” Compared to most of my jobs, this was kiddie play, but still, I was the hacker, and this was Chloe treading on my turf. And she knew it.

“Is that a problem, Toby?” she asked sweetly. “From the look on your face, you’d think somebody stole your boyfriend or something.”

Subtle she was not. Forget the fact that I’d been
ordered
to date Jack in the first place, and the fact that the two of them had been over long before I’d come into the picture. Clearly, I’d stolen her boyfriend, and therefore, her stealing hacking jobs was my just reward.

“So do you want the Cliff’s Notes, or do you want to read it yourself?” Now that she’d gotten in her jab, Chloe was all business.

“I’ll read it myself.”

An hour and a half later, Chloe grinned at me. “So do you want the Cliff’s Notes version, or do you want to read it yourself?”

On the one hand, I wanted to tell her to shut up. On the other hand, I still hadn’t managed to make sense of the dissertation, and we were running out of time before seventh period.

“Fine,” I said. “Cliff’s Notes.”

To Chloe’s credit, she didn’t make me say “please.”

“Basically, Ross managed to combine his degrees in biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, and genetics to design a nanotechnological device…” Chloe paused and then made a show of dumbing down her words for me, her smile broadening. “He built a teeny, tiny computer type thingy that is capable of targeting and altering DNA in a prespecified manner. These nanobots…I mean, these
thingies
he designed basically go in and rewrite a person’s genetic code.”

“Are we talking about the dissertation or a really bad science fiction movie?” I may have been stronger in math than in science, but even I knew enough to be skeptical. I was pretty sure the type of thing Chloe was describing shouldn’t have been possible.

“In terms of gene therapy, this is definitely a breakthrough,” Chloe said. “The really amazing thing is that these bots, as small as they are, can actually carry programs.”

I knew enough about technology to know that should have provoked skepticism on my part.

“This is real, Toby,” Chloe said. “I don’t know how, but it’s real. And it’s bad news.”

Nothing Chloe had said so far sounded particularly like bad news to me.

“At the point in time that Ross wrote his thesis, there were still some glitches in the programming. He managed to rewrite the DNA, but in a way that makes the information genes contain utterly useless.” Chloe’s eyes glazed over as she searched for the appropriate metaphor. “Think of a computer. What happens if you swipe your hard drive with a very large, very powerful magnet?”

“It wipes all of the data, the programs, everything. And then…”

“And then your computer is pretty much dead,” Chloe finished. “At the end of his thesis, Ross presented two alternatives for future research. One involved working out the kinks in programming so that the bots could be used for gene therapy, but that could take decades, maybe longer.”

“And the other alternative?”

“The other alternative involved two steps: adapt the prototype for use on humans, and make it airborne.”