ONCE I WAS done with my homework—which took me until eight, unfortunately—I set off on my important task of the night.
The task shouldn't have been mine. Not because I didn't want to do it, but because I wasn't the person who should be doing it. I'd called Jenny about the issue today as soon as I'd gotten home, but she hadn't answered. Neither had Kavanagh. I was left alone with this dangerous weapon, and I didn't know what to do with it. Turn it over to the police? What if Ms. Henderson didn't want that? And it wasn't like I could stride into the Henderson Tech building with this thing in my backpack and expect to be taken to her.
So, there I was in my room, the weapon on a cloth on my desk. My door was closed but I hadn't locked it, in case Mom got suspicious. My laptop was open on my bed, replaying the newscast for today. Red Soldier foils yet another bank robbery.
It brought a smile to my face, to be appreciated like that, even though I still had a lot to improve.
My task: dismantle the weapon. I know, it sounds terrible, but there was something off. The cuff had a clear, blatant label that said Henderson Technologies. This thing? If it turned out that it didn't have a label...then what would that mean?
I was wearing gloves and my science goggles. Really, though, if this thing was going to harm me in any way, it would be by exploding, and in that case, my gloves and goggles would do close to nothing to protect me. But, I felt confident that it wouldn't explode, and so I carefully picked up the ruined pieces.
The blaster-gun thingy was broken the way a lego toy gets dismantled: it was apart, but certain pieces were together, and wiring held the all the pieces together like a mobile toy. A mobile toy that kids should definitely not play with, of course.
It was smooth and dark-colored, and if I already didn't know where it was from, I would definitely accuse it of being alien. I picked apart the metal gently, and thankfully, no explosion-esque noises were emitted. I stared down the barrel—at least, what I thought was the barrel—and realized something a little annoying. The metal work on this thing was good, it was a fully functional weapon...but I could see seams. Little things where the parts were welded together.
What bothered me was this: why would a large, rich, experienced corporation like Henderson Technologies have such visible seams? Wouldn't their products be more...sleek? Flawless?
Maybe I was overthinking it. It wasn't like I was a weapons expert, especially not about these things. And Jenny had said that these weapons were prototypes and not mass produced for actual use.
Shoving those thoughts aside, I went back to picking apart the weapon. The entire time, I kept on high-alert in case Mom decided to come in, and I looked for the label. I'd taken apart the entire thing by the time I found it.
The label was in the centerpiece of the blaster. It was a purple thing encased in...glass? Plastic? I couldn't tell. It looked like something that someone would call a 'core.' Yes. A core. That was what I would call it.
The core was what had the label, and that also bothered me, because I knew what this meant. I couldn't be overthinking this one, it was a simple and very plausible explanation: the people who had stolen the tech were now tampering with it, using it to produce other things. The cuff had been Henderson's, and although this core was, too, the blaster was their own creation. Which meant they were getting crafty.
Which meant that I had to get them before things got worse.
A bank robbery was one thing. But with a whole bunch of these blasters and cuffs, a lot worse could happen.
I heard Mom's footsteps as she moved around, and I lunged toward my bed and switched tabs so that my laptop displayed Spotify instead of news broadcast. I flipped the extra cloth hanging over my desk onto the jumbled mess of metal and core to hide it. The footsteps stopped though, as Mom probably settled onto the couch. Weeknights were usually the time when she watched Law & Order.
My phone vibrated on my nightstand, and I hit accept when I saw the caller name: Irrelevant Goose. It was Ben, in case you were wondering. When we were around ten, he had this laugh that made him sound like a goose, and one time he laughed at a park, and the geese literally came over to us. I'd been planning to make his contact name Irrelevant Goose since then—goose because of what I just told you, and irrelevant because I like to tease—and when I'd gotten a phone at twelve, he had hoped that I'd forgotten, but I hadn't.
Irrelevant Goose has been gracing my phone for four years, and it will never disappear.
I put the phone on speaker and left it next to my laptop. "Whatcha doing, Ben?" I asked, flipping the cloth back down so that I could go back to disassembling this thing.
"Nothing much. Nice save today," he replied. I could hear his sister singing her heart out in the background. Nine-year-old Rosa Ramirez was convinced that, in order to annoy every single member of her family, all she had to do was sing into her loud, screechy Barbie microphone. Needless to say, she was right, and she knew it.
I waited until Rosa quieted down a little to speak again. "I have a problem," I murmured. At this point I was done with disassembling, but my mind was still on overdrive.
"What is it?"
"This weapon," I continued, flopping down on my bed next to my laptop after wrapping up the blaster and putting it underneath my bed. "The things I said they stole from Henderson Tech? They're making new things."
"Yeesh."
"Yeah. And that's not the only problem."
"You're one to talk," he said sarcastically. "I have to go to Queen Edgar's house tomorrow night to work on our balsa bridge project. You hear that? Night. Not after school, but night, because she said she has more important things to do directly after school than hang with a nerd."
Well, well. The bear-bee was awake and ready to sting.
"Anyway, sorry to butt in," he said, sighing. "Had to say that."
"No problem," I replied.
"So what's the other issue?"
"The tracker," I said, scrolling through my old Spotify playlists. I told him about the tracker disc I'd put on one of the men's shoe, and that I didn't know how to use the darn thing. I thought that I'd cross that bridge when I came to it, but now that Jenny and Kavanagh weren't answering my calls, I was lost.
There was something potentially useful in my box of things, though: a flash drive that I assumed would help me, but I was ready to fall asleep and I couldn't risk having it out. If Mom came into my room and saw me sleeping, and she happened to look at my laptop with the flash drive in it, she could find out about all of this.
"Peter? Hello?"
I realized that I'd almost dozed off right then, and since my phone was next to me and not in my hand, I'd forgotten that I was even on a call. "I'll talk to you tomorrow," I said, stifling a yawn. In all honesty, I should have remembered the flash drive earlier and attempted to use it, but it was too late now. Tomorrow, I thought, as Ben said goodbye and hung up.
☆
I woke up late in the morning. Not miss-school late, but late enough that I was scrambling out of the shower and tugging my clothes on in a hurry. I went to our little breakfast table and grabbed a piece of toast. I still had time left, but I needed to take at least three minutes to plug in the flash drive so that I knew whether or not the tracking stuff was on there.
"I'll eat in my room," I said to Mom, knowing that she'd assume I was packing my things.
"Actually, can you sit down for a minute?"
I paused. She would think, of course, that I'm very fast at packing and that I could totally sit down for a minute to hear what she had to say. Unfortunately for me, if I said no, she would know if something fishy was going on.
So I sat down at the table, and she sat down across from me. "Don't get mad," she said carefully, "but we're going to the Edgars' tonight."
I almost dropped my piece of toast. "What?" I asked, my mouth open in disbelief.
She shrugged. "You know how we're distantly related?"
I nodded.
"Grandma Immie thought we'd have a little get together. Uncle Frank will be there." She shrugged again, her face softening. "I know you have a problem with Dana, but it's only for dinner. Do you think you could do that?"
I puffed out my cheeks as I exhaled. "Sure," I said sourly. I didn't like Dana, but I didn't resent her enough to make a dumb excuse and skip out on a family gathering.
Mom smiled. "Great. Thanks." She looked down at the watch on her wrist. "You should get going."
I looked at the time on my phone and jumped. I went into my room—because I really did need to pack—and shoved my books and notebooks and other school things into my backpack. I felt just the tiniest bit guilty, but the tracker stuff could wait. After all, if this was really urgent, Jenny or Kavanagh would have told me.
Or at least answered my calls.