Never Say Genius (5 page)

“True, you didn’t,” Archie Clone said, “but the three of us have something in common.”

“What?” Coke asked.

“TGF,” Archie Clone said. “You know what that stands for, don’t you?”

The Genius Files
.

“You’re one of
us
?” Pep shouted. The cage dropped a few more inches, and she climbed higher. The top of the cage prevented her from climbing all the way out.

“That’s right,” Archie Clone said calmly, “and soon I’ll be the
only
one of us.”

As part of The Genius Files program (which you would know if you had read
The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable
), Dr. Warsaw had selected a small group of the brightest children in America. One of these kids might be sitting next to you right now as you read this book. These “gifted and talented” kids were identified using standardized testing in schools all over the country. Coke and Pep were singled out. They hadn’t met any of the other kids in the program … until now.

The cage dropped a few more inches, so the bottom of it was now below the level of the boiling oil. Pep screamed. Coke followed his sister’s lead, climbing up the wire to avoid the bubbling oil.

“So your plan is to kill all the Genius Files kids?” Coke asked.

“That’s right.”

“Why?” Coke asked. “What could that possibly accomplish?”

“Stop talking with him!” Pep screamed at her brother. “Find a way to get us out of here!”

“Oh hush, Pep,” said Archie Clone. “There’s no way out. I’m sure they told you when you joined The Genius Files that you would get a million dollars when you turn twenty-one years old, right?”

“Yeah, so?” said Coke.

“What they didn’t tell you is that it’s not a million dollars for each of us. It’s a million dollars for
all
of us. We’ll
split
it evenly. So let’s say there are a thousand kids who are members of The Genius Files. Do you know what a million dollars divided by a thousand works out to?”

Pep moved the decimal point in her head.

“A thousand dollars,” she said.

“That’s right,” Archie Clone said. “You
are
pretty smart! Now, I don’t know about you two, but I’m not going to put my life on the line for a lousy thousand bucks when I turn twenty-one.”

“So the more Genius Files kids who die before they reach twenty-one, the more money each survivor gets,” Coke reasoned.

“Hey, you’re catchin’ on, big guy!” said Archie Clone. “And if I happen to be the only survivor, well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens.”

“You get
all
the money!” Pep shouted. “You’re evil!”

“He’s also insane,” Coke added.

“Insane?” Archie Clone said, laughing. “Your mother drove halfway across the country to visit a mustard museum. And
I’m
the crazy one?”

“How did
you
know about that?” Pep demanded.

“Oh, I know all about you two,” Archie Clone said, smiling. “I do my homework, like a good boy.”

“How many other Genius Files kids are still alive?” Coke asked. “How many have you killed?”

“That’s none of your concern,” Archie Clone said.

The cage lowered a few more inches and Pep screamed again. The twins pressed themselves tightly against the top.

“
Do
something, Coke!” Pep shouted.

“What do you want me to do?” he yelled back at her. “Why don’t
you
figure something out for a change?”

“I didn’t want to come inside this stupid truck in the first place!” she said angrily. “I knew this was going to be trouble. You told me to relax and have fun!”

“I did not!”

“I wish you two would stop bickering,” Archie Clone said. “It’s giving me a headache. Just think of this as a ride. Like at a theme park. Except that at the end, you don’t get ice cream or cotton candy. You
die
. Ha, ha!”

He cackled an evil laugh as if he had heard it in the movies.

“Let us out!” Pep begged as the boiling oil rose inside the cage.

“Oh, what are you complaining about?” Archie Clone said. “The admission was free. Ha, ha! So put a smile on.”

“You’re sick, dude,” Coke said. “You know that? Genius and insanity go hand in hand. You should get help.”

“Oh, thanks for your expert analysis, Dr. Freud,” Archie Clone said sarcastically. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Coke. You were going to die anyway. Now you’ll just get it over with, seventy years early. No point in waiting until the last minute, right? Ha, ha!”

“My sneakers are heating up!” Pep yelled. “I can feel it.”

The greasy oil was smoking and spitting as it rose, splattering the twins.

“Don’t worry,” Archie Clone called out, “I don’t use any trans fats. You’ll be dead soon, but at least you’ll die with low cholesterol. Ha, ha!”

“You’ll never get away with this!” Coke told him. “The police will be here any second.”

“You’re right about that,” Archie Clone said. “I must be going. It wouldn’t look good if I was here when the police find your deep-fried bodies.”

“I hate you!” Pep shouted.

Archie Clone ignored her and pushed a button on a remote control, which caused a trap door to open in the floor about ten feet behind him.

“Have a nice life … what’s left of it!” he said as he lowered himself through the hole. “Ha, ha! I’m lovin’ it!”

Archie Clone jumped down through the hole, and the trap door shut over him. This was
bad
. The one person who could save them, who happened to also be the one person who was trying to kill them, was gone. The cage continued to lower itself into the oil. Now it was inches from their bottoms as they clung to the top of the cage. Sweat was pouring off them, dripping into the boiling oil, and splattering them.

“What are we gonna do?” Pep yelled to her brother. “Do you have anything? A tool? A Frisbee? Anything?”

“Yeah, I happen to have a chain saw in my pocket,” Coke replied sarcastically.

“Oh, great!”

“What would we do with a Frisbee anyway?” Coke asked sharply. “Have a catch to help us forget that we’re about to become human french fries?”

“I don’t know,” Pep said. “Maybe you could jam the Frisbee into those gears or something. Stop the machine.”

Coke looked at the gear mechanism outside the cage. It was about two feet away, turning slowly. He could reach it, but that wouldn’t do any good, unless he was willing to give up a few fingers for the cause.

But then he got an idea.

“Give me your Cheesehead!” he barked.

“What for?”

“Just give it to me!”

Coke grabbed the foam Cheesehead off Pep’s head and carefully climbed over his sister to the part of the cage that was closest to the gear mechanism. The Cheesehead was a little bit too big to fit through the openings in the cage, but it was spongy enough so Coke could squeeze it between the bars.

“Be careful!” Pep said.

“Hold on tight,” Coke ordered her.

He reached his right arm outside the cage and extended the Cheesehead toward the turning gears. Then he pushed the corner of the Cheesehead right between two gears.

The gears bit into the Cheesehead, ripping at the yellow foam. For a moment, it looked like the gears would simply chew the Cheesehead to tiny pieces without slowing down the mechanism. But then there was a groaning noise, a lurch, and the gears stopped turning. They had literally bitten off more than they could chew.

“It stopped!” Pep shouted gleefully. “We’re saved!”

“Not yet,” Coke said.

He still had to climb over to the other side of the cage and open a latch that was holding the top on. After struggling for a few minutes and nearly falling into the boiling oil below him, Coke managed to force open the latch and push up the top of the cage. He climbed out and then extended a hand down to pull his sister up after him. They jumped off the top and landed on the floor without getting hurt. The cage was almost completely submerged in oil.

“Let’s get out of here,” Coke said.

Moments after they pushed open a door and ran out of the truck, Coke and Pep spotted their parents in the parking lot, walking excitedly back to the RV.

“Oh, you kids missed something great,” Dr. McDonald told them.

“You should have seen it!” said Mrs. McDonald. “We found the shoe store. This guy Robert Wadlow was eight feet, eleven inches tall. His foot was
enormous
. It was three feet long. Imagine that! A foot was three feet. Just amazing.”

“How was the virtual french fry demonstration?” asked Dr. McDonald.

“Very … exciting,” Coke said honestly.

“Yeah, we really got to feel what it must be like to be a french fry,” said Pep.

“Where’s your Cheesehead?” Mrs. McDonald asked her.

“I … uh … lost it,” she replied. It was true, technically.

“I paid $14.99 for that Cheesehead!” Dr. McDonald complained, his voice rising.

“Don’t be mad, Ben,” his wife said. “It’s their birthday.”

“You’re right,” he said with a sigh.

It’s hard to be mad at somebody on their birthday. All Pep did was lose her silly Cheesehead. It wasn’t like she murdered anybody or anything.

“Hey, how about we go to McDonald’s for dinner?” asked Mrs. McDonald. “I bet you’re really in the mood for french fries after seeing that demonstration, huh?”

The twins looked at each other.

“We’re not hungry,” they said simultaneously.

I
t had been a long day. A
ridiculously
long day. It seemed like ages ago when Coke and Pep were being chased through The House on the Rock by Mrs. Higgins, their evil health teacher. They had clotheslined her with a piece of twine stretched across a walkway in the dark. Then they were grabbed by those two bowler dude maniacs dressed in suits of armor, who dragged them to Dr. Warsaw. He would have killed them for sure if they hadn’t snatched away his portable electronic torture device and pushed him out of the hole in the bottom of The Infinity Room. And now, this Archie Clone lunatic had nearly deep-fried them in a pool filled with boiling oil.

Some birthday.

The next scheduled stop was Chicago, just twenty miles away. But it’s hard to find a place to park an RV overnight in such a big city. So Dr. McDonald decided to splurge and have the family spend the night at a motel in Des Plaines. He pulled into Best Western Des Plaines Inn, just down the road on Lee Street. It would be nice to sleep in a regular bed for a change. Instead of jamming the whole family into one room, they got two—one for the kids and one for the grown-ups.

The twins didn’t ask for cake or ice cream or some sweet treat to top off their birthday. All they wanted to do was go to sleep, and try to forget what had happened over the last twenty-four hours. They were exhausted.