Popular Clone (17 page)

“He's bugged,” said the man. “Scramble it. ”

“On it,” replied the woman.

One more muffled scream from his clone, and the picture turned to static and the sound to silence.

Fisher sat, staring at the black-and-white blizzard on his screen, dumbstruck and terrified.

Two had just been kidnapped.

Clone-napped.

But who had done it—and why?

In a panic, Fisher punched wildly at the screen's controls, trying to erase all traces that he had used it. In the process, he accidentally hit the
START SHOWER
control. Instantly, he was blasted with cold water. He thrashed around under the spray, and smacked the
KARAOKE
button that his mom, who liked to sing in the shower, had put in. A background piano track for the Beatles' “I Want to Hold Your Hand” started to play as Fisher struggled, slipped, stood again, and finally managed to turn off the water.

Then he bolted to his room, where FP still lay on the floor. The little pig came up to him and nuzzled his shin. Fisher, soaked, was too shocked to notice.

It wasn't enough to say things had gone from bad to worse. Things had gone from disastrous to catastrophic.

He had to save Two.

CHAPTER 17

Telling a human being not to panic is like stealing a child's favorite teddy bear and then telling it not to cry. It's completely pointless, but it makes me laugh.

—Dr. X, Notes on Human Weakness

Fisher ran for his bedroom door, then stopped himself. He couldn't get outside without being seen by house security. He paced back and forth, his heart whomping in his chest like a giant's fist.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw an object in his window. The ladder that Two had installed!

Fisher ran over and looked at it. It was a simple contraption of metal and plastic, camouflaged to look like a vine-encircled tree branch. Fisher scrambled down it as fast as he could, dashed to the front yard, burst through the liquid gate, and ran to the park.

But the park looked the same as it always did. Not a trace of the black van. The kidnappers hadn't dropped anything, and the robot must have gone with them. There weren't even any tire marks. Nothing.

Two could be anywhere. For all Fisher knew, the van could've taken him to a helicopter, or a plane. In an hour or two he might not even be on US soil anymore. He could be in a top-secret prison or a gloomy mob dungeon.

Fisher dashed back to the house. He scrambled across Two's emergency ladder, and accidentally clipped its manual release control. The ladder retracted out from under him and he only just managed to cling to his windowsill, pull himself over it, and collapse into his room, face-planting on his carpet.

He had to calm down, so he could think. He sat down at his desk, and FP curled up in his lap. He still shook as though his stomach had been replaced with a tumble dryer.

“Think, Fisher. Think,” he muttered to himself.

Before he did anything, he had to reconsider the crucial question. Did the kidnappers know that Two was a clone? Or had they intended to grab Fisher?

Just then, he heard a chiming sound downstairs. It sounded like it was coming from the television. Fisher scrambled to his feet, tossing FP to the carpet, who landed with an outraged squeak. He cracked open his door silently, listening.

“… middle of a lab procedure. What's that noise?” he heard his mom say.

“I was doing some very delicate telescope adjustments,” answered his dad. “Fisher, is that you making this racket?”

Fisher crept into the hall. He heard his parents walk into the living room. He tiptoed down the stairs, slipping behind one of his father's newest six-foot ferns, and saw his mother in full lab gear, one glove still on. His father, looking irritated, took off his own lab coat. The television screen was blank, but it was still buzzing and chiming.

“Looks like something's wrong with the TV,” Fisher's mom said. “I'll have a look.”

As she leaned in to look at it, the television turned on by itself. Fisher had to stuff his face into the fern's fronds to keep himself from gasping. His parents both jerked up in surprise.

The image took a few seconds to resolve itself: a man, from the shoulders up, entirely in silhouette.

Fisher's mother grew very pale.

“Dr. X,” she whispered.

“You know me,” said Dr. X. “That will save time.” There was a detached, inhuman coldness to his voice. “You may have noticed that your son is not at home.”

Fisher's parents looked at each other. Dr. X paused for a moment to let his first words sink in, and then continued.

“The reason he isn't at home is that he is, at this moment, in my keeping.”

“You can't be serious,” said Fisher's dad, the color draining from his face. His mom began to tremble, the goggles around her neck trembling with her.

“I do not joke,” said Dr. X, tilting his head very slightly.

“I have, in fact, no sense of humor at all. But I will get to the real point of business between us. You, Mrs. Bas, have something that I want. I now have something that you want.”

“You … ,” she began, tears forming in her eyes. “You can't be talking about …”

“The Accelerated Growth Hormone. Precisely. I commend you on your work. I cannot replicate your success. I must, therefore, procure the hormone by different methods. Send a workable sample of the formula to me if you wish your son to see daylight again. You will come to my compound and hand over the formula to a guard in my service at dawn tomorrow. Do not attempt to contact the police. I am …
very
good at cleaning up
evidence
.”

Then the screen went dark.

“Would he really— Could he even—” his dad stammered, his face flushing to an unusual shade of purplish red.

“I knew it. He's ruthless!” his mom replied. “He'll do whatever he can to get his hands on the formula!”

She snatched up the phone, then stared at it. Fisher's dad slammed it back onto the receiver.

“No cops,” he insisted. “You heard what Dr. X said!”

Fisher sucked in a deep breath. He needed to come clean about Two at last. He couldn't bear seeing his par-ents so upset. And maybe they could convince Dr. X to release Two.

As he was about to step out from behind the fern, Mrs. Bas burst out:

“I don't know if the AGH even works. If it does, Xander could do terrible things with it. He could create armies from next to nothing. But how else can we get Fisher back?”

Fisher hesitated. His insides had turned to ice. If Dr. X found out that Two was a clone … if he knew the AGH worked …

Armies from next to nothing.
The words echoed in his head.

“Come on,” his dad replied, putting a hand around her arm. “Let's consult with the Crisis Computer at my lab. It can calculate hundreds of scenarios in seconds and predict the best course of action to take. Hurry!”

Fisher's parents tried to move in five different directions at once, and the result was a mad flailing. They looked like pinballs in a popcorn maker. Fisher's mom ran right into a sofa, tumbled over it, righted herself, and ran out the door. Fisher's dad
almost
got out the door, when one of the specimen nets sticking out of his coat caught on the banister. His feet flew straight out, and he crashed to the floor. His mom raced back inside, helped him up, and together they raced outside, leaving the front door gaping wide open.

Fisher waited until he heard his dad's ancient truck sputtering to life outside, closed and locked the front door, then ran back up the stairs and into his room. He hadn't realized just how much Dr. X wanted to get his hands on the AGH, and what he might do once he got it. If Dr. X knew that Two was an AGH-produced clone, he might try to see if there was enough of the compound left in his body tissues to provide the sample he needed … all he would need was a small sample of Two's DNA. Some hair. A skin sample …

Or blood.

There was only one option left. He had to mount a rescue.

FP trotted over, looking up at Fisher questioningly.

Fisher crouched down to pet his ears. “Hey, boy. You know how you're always wanting to run off on grand adventures?”

FP snuffled, nuzzling Fisher's hand.

“Well, now's your chance. I'll need someone to watch my back. Whaddya say?”

FP tapped his front hooves on the ground, one after the other.

“All right then,” Fisher said. “We have some prep work to do.”

If Fisher was going to get Two out of Dr. X's clutches, he would have to use all of the resources available to him. His mother had been careful to strip his lab of much of its equipment. Fisher was going to have to get some of it back.

As FP walked in excited circles around the room looking brave and spyish, glancing from side to side and attempting to tiptoe on his hooves, Fisher surveyed what remained in his room. Fortunately, he had a few items stashed in hidden places that his mom hadn't discovered.

Rolled up in the bottom of his shirt drawer was his Spy Suit. He'd never anticipated actually
needing
a Spy Suit, but no twelve-year-old boy with the capacity to make himself a Spy Suit will ever fail to do so.

He slipped it on. It was a flexible polymer suit allowing complete mobility and plenty of places to store gear. Fisher examined himself in the mirror. Its close fit emphasized his complete lack of shoulder width and muscle mass, but the mysterious air it lent him made up for his small size. He hoped.

Fisher picked up his handy Screw Liquefier and slipped it into the suit's tool belt. He also grabbed his special rope, which he kept in an airtight canister. Once it came in contact with air, the rope would slowly disintegrate into a colorless vapor. That way Fisher could tie it securely to something, leave it there, and in thirty minutes, there would be no evidence of its existence.

“Stay there a minute, boy,” Fisher said to FP. He exited his room, doing his best stealthy spy walk. He would use his hallway as practice for the mission ahead. He crouched low, padding along quietly, taking cover behind any object big enough to hide him. Thankfully, most objects could. He steadied his breathing, thinking of Vic Daring sneaking down into the royal treasure house of Mars.

He slipped open the door to his mom's home lab, noting the security camera, which tracked slowly back and forth in a ceiling mount. Somewhere inside her lab was equipment she had confiscated from Fisher's room— equipment he now desperately needed.

He sucked in a deep breath and slid under a lab table just as the camera rotated to face him. When he heard it continue its rotation, he crawled forward on his stomach, just under the path of a laser. The main storage locker was at the far end of this room.

Fisher moved into a crouch, and leapt over a second laser …

… Crashing straight into a massive centrifuge his mother used for very large containers.

The centrifuge switched on as he collided with it and began whirling him around and around. Fisher clutched to a steel jar for dear life, as his stomach spun up into his throat.

The camera was turning back toward him. Fisher fumbled frantically for the
OFF
switch, feeling like his brain would be spun apart into a scramble at any second. Finally, he found it. The centrifuge came abruptly to a stop, and Fisher was flung across the room and into a pile of old, plastic machine parts. They avalanched on top of him just as the camera turned to face him.

Fisher dug himself out from underneath the pile as he heard the camera spin away from him. One final dash brought him to the locker door, and out of the camera's range.

The locker was fitted with an old-fashioned safe combination lock. He looked around the outside of the door for a few moments, then saw a small seam in the door near the lock. Reaching down, he pulled a tiny thread out of one glove, and fed it through the hole. The thread was a tiny wire with a micro-camera at its end. Reaching back behind his neck, Fisher pulled an eyepiece on a cord out of his suit, and fitted it over his right eye.

The tiny camera allowed him to see the inside of the lock. He was able to see when the gears lined up as he turned the dial.

108. October 8. The locker's code was Fisher's birthday. Fisher felt a pang, even as the locker opened with a satisfying clank.