Revenge of the Ninja, page 8
Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
Scarlett held out the blueprint. “You haven’t seen this, I guess.”
Tommy scanned the document. “No, that’s . . .” His eyes darted around as he took it all in. “He wouldn’t . . .”
“Can you think of another meaning for ‘casualties within acceptable limits,’ Tommy? Something that doesn’t suggest that he is willing to cut a bloody swath through a bunch of innocent scientists to get to this Commander person?”
Tommy glared at Scarlett. “That is not what’s happening.”
“You don’t know that,” she countered. “Probably none of us do, except your uncle. And good luck getting it out of him.”
“I will,” insisted Tommy. “I’ll ask him as soon as he gets back.”
Scarlett’s eyes narrowed as she tried to decide if he really meant it. The Hard Master did not like to be questioned. And he definitely didn’t like people trying to pry secrets out of him. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” he said impatiently. “What, you think I’m too—”
He paused and caught Stan’s fist, which had been traveling swiftly toward the back of his neck. Without effort, or seemingly much interest even, the white-clad ninja twisted Stan’s arm, forcing him down and away.
“Nice try, eighth grader. Next time maybe bring a marching band to accompany your ‘sneaking.’” Tommy shook his head. “I know my brother hasn’t been able to give you any instruction lately, but wow, you must be seriously slacking on your training.”
Stan winced as his arm was twisted behind him but didn’t complain. He knew that much at least.
Tommy turned back to Scarlett, keeping Stan in the painful hold. “I’m going to let you and your pet eighth grader go, Shana. And I won’t tell my uncle that you were here. Not right away, at least. First, I’ll verify that you’re completely wrong about all of this. After that, I’ll tell the Hard Master how you disobeyed him and intruded upon his private quarters. Then I’ll make some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy watching what will surely be an epic punishment.”
Scarlett was grateful that he at least wasn’t dismissing the possibility completely. She understood how tempting that was. But while Tommy was loyal to his family, he wasn’t the sort of person to follow anyone blindly—not even his uncle.
“Thank you, Tommy,” she said gravely. “Believe it or not, I actually hope you’re right and I do get the most epic punishment ever. That would still be better than risking the lives of Stan and Julien’s parents.”
CHAPTER
15
THE RETURN OF ZARTAN??
“Let me make sure I understand you correctly,” said Julien when Scarlett and Stan met up with him later at the clubhouse. “You’re telling me that an army of ninjas are about to go on a murder spree where our parents work?”
He looked like he was very close to freaking out. Scarlett tried to reassure him.
“We’re not going to let it happen.”
He did not look reassured. “And just how are we going to stop them?”
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted.
Scarlett had left the red bandanna on the timber wolf statue for Zoro-me, but he hadn’t shown himself yet. For now, it was just Julien, Stan, and her against a ninjutsu master and an unknown number of his disciples.
“Scarlett . . .” Stan was also freaking out, but he’d had more time to digest the information, so he was at least doing it more quietly. “To be honest, I don’t think the three of us can handle this. Not alone.”
“You’re right,” she said. “The stakes are too high for us to tackle this by ourselves. We need to tell AVC what we’ve learned.”
“You’re going to message that Lady Jaye person?” he asked.
She shook her head. “She told me that Roadblock would be our point of contact from now on, so we should go to him first.”
“What about Duke?” asked Julien. “Mr. Hinton seems great and all, but we’ve known Dr. Hauser for a lot longer.”
“Why not both?” suggested Stan. “Tomorrow, Julien and I have class down the hall from Dr. Hauser’s office, so we can stop by and talk to him.”
“And I have Mr. Hinton for Chemistry, so I’ll talk to him,” said Scarlett. “Then we can meet back here and figure out what we’ll do next.”
She tried to give her friends the confident smile that a leader was supposed to present, but deep down she was still struggling with the knowledge that one of her mentors might truly have no problem with killing a bunch of innocent people. And just like before, her friends saw through her attempts to disguise how upset she was.
“Sorry, Scarlett,” said Stan. “I know you really wanted to believe that Mr. Hinton was wrong about Hādo-sensei.”
Her smile slowly drooped. “Yeah.”
“I don’t think Mr. Hinton is the kind of dude who’d be all ‘I told you so,’” said Julien. “But . . . do you want us to talk to him, and you can talk to Dr. Hauser?”
Now Scarlett’s smile was sincere. “That’s nice of you to offer, Julien. But I was the one who was rude to him. I should be the one to admit he was right.”
Not that she looked forward to the conversation. In fact, she dreaded it. That night, she lay in bed for a long time imagining possible outcomes. Everything from extremely chill (“Don’t sweat it, everybody makes mistakes!”) to the worst-case scenario (“You’re a gullible fool who should never be put in charge of anything ever again!”). She knew both were extreme, of course, and resigned herself to the outcome being something in between.
Hinton always wore a white lab coat while he was teaching. Rather than make him look like a geeky scientist, it made Scarlett realize that lab coats were not designed for brainy people who also looked like action heroes. His arms looked like they might burst out of their sleeves at any moment, and when he turned away, his broad back was like a sudden whiteout blizzard. But as distracting as all that could be at times, she had to admit he was a great teacher. Always patient, thoughtful, and encouraging.
Or at least he usually was. Today he was none of those things.
“Wrong,” he snapped at one poor student. “Study harder.”
Later, he told another student, “The answer is obvious. Why can’t you see it?”
A few minutes after that, he pointedly asked a third, “What is wrong with you?”
He was like that for the entire class period. Curt, dismissive, and frankly, rather rude. That wasn’t just Scarlett’s impression, either. She could see other students giving each other confused, even hurt looks. It was one thing to have a mean teacher. If you expected it, you could kind of brace for it. But if a teacher who was always nice suddenly turned on you, it was really upsetting.
Once the class ended, the other students hurried out as fast as they could. Scarlett hesitated as she watched Hinton sit and begin tapping on his desk like he was writing something on his Lyre XR. Even silent and alone, he had none of his usual warmth. She was not looking forward to talking to him while he was in such a bad mood, but this was literally a life-or-death situation happening in three days’ time.
“Hey, um, Mr. Hinton, do you have a minute?”
“Yes, Shana. Do you need to talk about something?”
He waved his hand to clear whatever he had been looking at on his Lyre. He smiled at Scarlett, which normally would have been a good sign. But this smile was bland, and not at all like the usually jovial teacher/pastry chef. She wondered what could have put him in such a bad mood. With a pang of discomfort, she realized that this was the first time they’d spoken since she’d rudely walked out on him at the clubhouse. Maybe he was mad at her? Hopefully if she apologized and admitted she was wrong, he would be nice again.
Scarlett had of course considered several strategies for her apology and had decided to go for the direct approach.
“Mr. Hinton, I’m really sorry I didn’t believe you about the Arashikages.”
He stared at her. “The Arashikages?”
She had been wondering if Hinton already knew Hādo’s plan, but his wide-eyed look made it clear he was surprised she was bringing him up. Maybe the fact that she was giving him new intel would make him more inclined to forgive her.
“You were totally right to be worried about Hādosensei. He and a bunch of his clan members are going after someone called the Commander at DeCobray headquarters.”
“The Commander?” Now he looked even more confused.
“Yeah, I have no idea who that is either,” admitted Scarlett. “And normally I guess I wouldn’t have a problem with the Arashikages going after some Cobra operative. But I’m afraid that Hādo-sensei is so upset he doesn’t care who he hurts along the way. I think they’re planning to cut through several DeCobray labs to get to this Commander, which would put a bunch of innocent scientists, including Stan’s mom and Julien’s dad, in real danger.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Hinton.
She winced. “I was afraid you might ask. Okay, so maybe we snuck into the Arashikage hideout. I know we were supposed to consult you before we took direct action, but—”
He cut her off. “You know where the Arashikage hideout is?”
“Um . . . yeah?”
“Where is it?”
Scarlett really wanted to tell Hinton so that he would be nice to her again. But even knowing that Hādo’s plan put innocent people in danger, she was uncomfortable betraying his secret location. Surely there had to be some other way to stop him. Besides, the way Hinton was acting was starting to make her suspicious. He seemed more interested in the whereabouts of the Arashikage base than the fact that Stan and Julien’s parents were in danger. That didn’t seem like the nurturing, pie-loving Roadblock she knew.
She glanced around, then gave him a meaningful look. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to talk about that.”
“Just tell me now,” Hinton said bluntly. “Where is the Arashikage base?”
Scarlett stared at him, trying to make sense of this radical shift. Then she noticed he was still wearing his Lyre XR. The tiny LED on the device was flickering like mad, as though it was handling vast amounts of data.
That’s when a dreadful suspicion began to form in her mind.
Former principal Zartan had turned the Lyre XR into a device that could control a person’s emotions. At one point, he’d used the devices to turn the students of Springfield Academy into a mob and sent them after her and the rest of the JOES. It had been scary, but kind of an imprecise way of manipulating people.
What if he had figured out a way to gain total control of a person? Not just their feelings, but their thoughts and behaviors as well. Almost like some kind of remote puppeteer? If that was the case, telling Roadblock the location of the Arashikage base would basically be like telling Zartan. And Cobra.
Before she said anything more, she needed to figure out what was going on.
“Uh, sorry Mr. Hinton, I, uh, just remembered I have a, uh, dentist appointment right after school. We can talk about this more some other time.” She turned to go.
“Wait.”
She braced herself as she looked back. Hinton loomed over her, his expression so menacing she hardly recognized him. Was he going to attack her?
But all he did was ask, “When?”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant.
“Oh! When will we talk about it some more?”
“Yes.”
“Uh . . . tomorrow after school?”
He relaxed immediately and sat back down. “Excellent.”
“Right . . .” she said uneasily. “See you tomorrow, then.”
“I look forward to it,” he said in a weirdly formal way that did not sound like Roadblock at all. “You are dismissed.”
Scarlett had never left a classroom so quickly in her life.
As she made her way across the soccer field to the clubhouse, she wrestled with the fact that their new, super competent and extremely nice AVC contact might be under the control of the evil Zartan, who had emotionally tortured children, then tried to use them as murder weapons. What could he do with someone like Roadblock under his control? She had to tell Stan and Julien.
But when she got to the clubhouse, the boys were already panicked. They started talking over each other before she’d even had time to sit down.
“Zartan’s back!” said Stan. “He’s gotta be!”
“We are in so much trouble right now,” said Julien.
“Whoa, guys, slow down.” She dropped into her seat at the table. “Okay, one at a time. What happened?”
“Dr. Hauser was acting really weird,” said Julien.
“Yeah, it was like he wasn’t even worried that our parents might be in danger,” said Stan. “All he wanted to know was where the Arashikages are hiding.”
“Huh . . .” said Scarlett, doing her best to present a calm demeanor she didn’t actually feel. If Hauser was acting just like Hinton, what did that mean?
“So then,” continued Julien, “I noticed Dr. Hauser was still wearing his Lyre, which is weird for him. And when I took a peek at network traffic passing through the device, there was a huge data stream coming into his Lyre, heavily encrypted, from a server I have never seen before.”
“I see . . .” Her unease shifted into dread.
“What if Zartan is somehow messing with people through the Lyre devices again?” asked Stan. “We have to tell Mr. Hinton.”
Scarlett shook her head. “We can’t.”
“Why not?” asked Julien.
“Because he’s been compromised, too. In exactly the same way.”
They stared at her as the realization sank in that they were completely on their own.
“What do we do?” asked Stan, his eyes wide.
“You’re going to tell that Lady Jaye, right?” asked Julien.
“As soon as I get home,” said Scarlett. “In the meantime, the two of you just lay low. Extremely low. Right now, we are potentially surrounded by enemies on all sides.”
They looked at each other worriedly, then nodded.
“Guys, I promise I’ll come up with a plan,” she told them.
Stan grinned tightly. “Of course! You haven’t let us down yet.”
“Sure I have,” she objected. “When we got caught by the Baroness in Destro’s office.”
He frowned. “Oh yeah, I guess I kind of forgot about that . . .”
“You . . . forgot?” Scarlett was stunned. How could Stan not remember her colossal failure in leadership?
“Wait a sec.” Julien gave her a shrewd look. “Scarlett, have you been beating yourself up about that all week?”
“Umm . . .” She couldn’t quite meet his gaze. She looked down at her hands as her face heated up. “Maaaybe?”
“Girl, you need to be a little kinder to yourself,” Julien told her.
“Yeah, nobody expects perfection.” said Stan. “Not even from you. And we still trust you with our lives.”
“That’s the truth,” agreed Julien.
She smiled gratefully. “Thanks, guys.”
CHAPTER
16
OR SOMETHING WORSE???
Scarlett came home to a quiet house. No shouting, threatening, or anything else. Also, no parents. Not even her mom, which was strange, since her mom only ever went to work and came home. It was possible her parents were out together. That sometimes happened after her father took things too far. He’d sober up and feel bad about what he did, then try to make it up to Scarlett’s mom by taking her to a nice restaurant and buying her a bunch of stuff they couldn’t afford.
Well, Scarlett couldn’t worry about that right now. She had her own problems. But as soon as she walked through the door, her little brother waved a sheet of paper in her face.
“Shana, I need you to sign Mom’s name.”
“Huh? Why, what is it?” she asked.
“It’s a permission slip,” said Paul. “We’re going on a field trip to meet the real Crimson Guard! Isn’t that cool?”
“Yeah, sure, super cool,” she said sarcastically. “Why can’t Mom sign it?”
“She hasn’t come home, and it’s due tomorrow.” Paul deployed the sad puppy dog eyes beneath his sandy crew cut. “Please, Shana, greatest big sister who ever lived?”
Scarlett sighed. “Okay, okay, don’t hurt yourself there, Mr. Flattery.”
She took the paper and pen he was holding out, pressed the paper against the wall, and signed her mom’s name. This wasn’t the first time—or even fifth—their parents weren’t around to sign things. Paul’s handwriting was still too childish, but Scarlett managed a decent imitation of her mother’s looping, nearly illegible scrawl.
“You owe me one.” She handed the paper back to him.
He grinned impishly. “For what? Mom signed this, not you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I guess, you little smart aleck.”
Paul scampered off, no doubt to watch more Crimson Guard.
Scarlett hurried to her room and booted up her computer. As soon as she launched the encrypted AVC chat channel, a message popped up.
Lady Jaye: There you are. We may have a situation.
Scarlett: That Roadblock and Duke have been compromised?
Lady Jaye: Compromised? All I know is they haven’t checked in for a couple of days. I thought Cobra might have taken them out.
Scarlett: They’re still at school and seem physically well, but not acting like themselves. And Glitch is seeing huge data streams on their Lyre coming from an unknown and heavily encrypted server. Do you know if Zartan has expanded the Lyre capabilities to take full control of the wearer?
Lady Jaye: Our intelligence doesn’t suggest anything like that.
Scarlett: Well something is definitely affecting their behavior. But that’s not our only problem. We’ve uncovered an Arashikage plot to assault DeCobray headquarters that seems likely to endanger innocent scientists.
Lady Jaye: And here I thought I would be the one bringing bad news to you . . .
