Noah shrugged. “Could be. Although they may not need to tie into a spybot to track the others like I did.”

  Just then, another cluster of dots appeared on the upper right section of the screen. It vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Did anyone else see that?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Sam replied. “Another group of them… just for a second.”

  I pointed to that part of the screen. “Can you zoom in on this section?”

  Noah drew a box around the area and clicked a button. That section of Shopton enlarged to fill the screen. It was a nearby business district full of warehouses and small supply houses. My dad had taken me to a paper company there before, to buy custom paper rolls for a model rocket project.

  Everyone stared at the map in silence, but the area remained clear of dots. If Sam hadn’t seen the blip as well, I would’ve wondered if I had been seeing things. But just as my eyes began to water from keeping them open for so long, the group of red dots appeared again.

  Noah quickly enlarged the area, and the cluster spread out a little as he zoomed in. There looked like there were dozens of spybots in that area.

  Amy pointed at the screen. “There!”

  The dots were clustered over the large building before blinking out again. The map labeled the building as “U-Lock-Up Storage.”

  “Hey, I know that place,” Noah said. “My grandmother has a storage unit there.”

  “Why are they blinking off and on like that?” asked Sam.

  I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

  Noah’s arms shot up. “I do! That whole place is metal—the siding, the roll-up doors, everything.”

  “And the metal blocks the signal,” Amy added.

  The cluster of the lights blinked on again.

  “And when someone opens the door, the signals can get out,” I said.

  “That’s a big place,” Noah said. “I don’t know how we’ll be able to find out which unit they’re using.”

  I pointed to the screen and shrugged. “Maybe we can look for whoever is opening and closing a door?”

  11 The Reverberating Reconnaissance

  NOAH AND I PEDALED DOWN the dark street. The storage place wasn’t far away, but there was no telling when the spybot creator would lock up for the night. So I had hopped on my bike (while Noah borrowed my dad’s) and we headed over as quickly as we could.

  Sam and Amy decided to stay and monitor the computer, and also fill in my dad when he got off the phone. I tried to let him know the situation before we left, but he was busy contacting company employees now that the missing circuit boards had turned up. Although this was another one of my act-first-think-later plans, I didn’t think my father would be too upset. Besides, this might be our only chance to find out once and for all who was behind the spybots.

  We turned down another street and the storage place came into view on the left. Long, thin buildings held rows of storage units, each with a metal roll-up door and a regular entry door.

  Noah took the lead as he pulled into the main entrance. He parked in front of a small keypad and shook his head. “I never thought getting dragged along to this place would come in handy.” He punched in the code, the keypad beeped, and a large chain-link gate rolled to one side.

  We pedaled through the entrance and down between two of the long buildings.

  “Nobody’s here,” Noah whispered.

  “There has to be,” I said, pulling out my phone. I stopped my bike long enough to shoot Sam a text.

  Anything? I wrote.

  They haven’t appeared again yet, she replied.

  I hoped we weren’t too late. If the spybot creator had left for the night, we’d never find out which unit they were using.

  I supposed my father could go to the police to get a search warrant. But would they issue a warrant based on some kids hacking into a toy to track other toys that contained stolen technology? Heck, I barely believed it.

  We reached the end of the long building and pedaled past the end. As we turned between the next two buildings, I received a text from Sam. They’re back.

  Up ahead, a car was parked at the far end of the building. An entry door was propped open and light poured out of the storage unit.

  “Check it,” I whispered to Noah.

  We parked our bikes at the end of the building and crept toward the open door. I heard voices as we approached, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  We made our way through the shadows until we reached the open door. Noah and I crouched behind the door and listened. The voices fell silent.

  I glanced at Noah and he motioned for me to take a look. I pointed at my chest and mouthed, Me? Noah just shrugged.

  I shook my head and slowly peeked around the door. I spotted a man reaching for a large plastic bin on the top shelf of a shelving unit.

  “You’re sure it’s in this one?” the man asked.

  “No, but we haven’t checked it yet,” replied a woman’s voice.

  I looked farther around the door to see a woman standing with her back to me. She had her hands out as if ready to catch the man if he fell.

  I quickly scanned the rest of the space. It was full of stacked furniture, sporting equipment, and shelves of large plastic bins. There wasn’t a goblin in sight.

  “I still think we sold it in the garage sale,” the man said, straining to pull the large bin off the shelf.

  “We better not have,” said the woman. “That was his favorite jacket.”

  I eased back into the shadows and shook my head at Noah. Whoever these people were, they weren’t behind the spybots.

  We silently made our way back to our bikes. Just before I climbed on, I heard a voice coming from the other side of the building. I caught Noah’s eye and pointed in that direction.

  We both crept to the corner and poked our heads around. A bike lay on the ground and a tall figure stood near an open door, three units down. He was facing our direction, but no light shone from inside the unit, so I couldn’t make out his face. He held a phone up to his ear.

  “… stop? Just like that?” the figure asked. It was a male voice that sounded kind of familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Plus, he was so far away that I couldn’t make out everything he said. “What… supposed to do with…”

  The fact that the mystery person had a bike there like us, and his voice sounded familiar, and there were tons of videos uploaded to the web, made me suspect that the culprit was an academy student like us.

  Noah and I glanced at each other. This sounded more promising.

  “Hello?” the person asked. “Hello… hear me?”

  He stepped all the way out of the doorway and the door shut behind him. Noah and I ducked back behind the corner as he began walking in our direction.

  “Hello?” his voice asked again, much louder this time. “You’re breaking up.”

  I held my breath as he walked closer to our hiding spot.

  “… little better,” the voice said, a bit quieter now.

  I poked my head out to see that the figure was walking in the opposite direction now. His voice faded as he moved farther down between the two buildings.

  “Come on,” I whispered to Noah.

  Noah and I left our hiding place and jogged down to the third doorway. Noah opened the door and stepped inside. I was about to go after him when I noticed a combination padlock on the ground. I picked it up before following Noah inside. I wanted to be long gone before the guy came back, but just in case, I didn’t want to end up locked inside the unit. And after I switched on my phone’s flashlight app and saw where we were, I liked the idea even less.

  I gasped and my blood turned to ice as my light shone over shelves upon shelves of the spybots. If you think they looked creepy by themselves, imagine dozens and dozens of them, an entire army, all lined up as if they were ready for a full-scale invasion. They looked down at us with devious expressions, silent and waiting.

  We had found the correct storage unit, all right. My heart raced, and it took all I could do to keep from running out of there.

  “Whoa,” Noah said.

  “Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa,” the goblins replied, Noah’s voice rippling through the unit. Each voice was in a different pitch and their eyes glowed as they spoke, creating an eerie light show inside the storage unit.

  “Oh man,” Noah said, a tremor in his voice.

  “Oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man,” the goblins all replied.

  I covered Noah’s mouth before he could say anything else. The light from my phone reflected in his terrified eyes.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered, and then immediately regretted it.

  “Out of here, out of here, out of here,” whispered the goblins.

  We didn’t need any more convincing. We ran for the door, but as soon as my hand was on the knob, I heard a voice on the other side.

  “Hang on,” said the person. “I can’t find the lock.”

  My eyes widened. I turned to Noah and aimed my phone at my other hand, showing him the padlock.

  Dude! Noah mouthed.

  I shrugged in reply and then froze when the large roll-up door began to rattle. Whoever was behind the spybot invasion was about to open the big door and see Noah and me standing there. I spun my light around the unit but there was nowhere to hide. We were so busted.

  “Never mind,” the voice said. “I’ll just grab one of the locks from the big door.”

  A couple of the goblins replied, “Big door, big door.”

  A metallic rattle came from the other side of the door as a new padlock was attached. After that, I could swear I heard a bicycle being pedaled away.

  We were trapped.

  12 The Replication Liberation

  “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” NOAH asked.

  Then the goblins repeated the question. “What were you thinking, thinking, thinking?”

  I held up the lock. “I was trying to keep us from getting locked in.”

  “Locked in, locked in,” the spybots taunted.

  Noah cringed at the sound.

  I held up my phone. “Look, my dad has some bolt cutters. I’ll call him and he’ll get us out of here.”

  As the spybots repeated my words, Noah just shook his head. “Yeah, right. Good luck with that.”

  “Good luck with that, luck with that,” they agreed.

  As I held up my phone, I realized what Noah must’ve already figured out. If the spybot signals couldn’t get out of the storage unit, neither could a cell signal.

  I jutted a thumb at the back of the unit. “What about the couple next door?” I asked. “They might be able to hear us.”

  Noah ignored the repeating goblins. “And they have bolt cutters in there?”

  “No, but they could call my dad,” I said.

  Noah shrugged. “Worth a try.”

  “Worth a try, worth a try,” taunted the goblins as we moved to the roll-up door.

  We both beat with our fists. “Help!” we shouted. “Help! We’re trapped!”

  The goblins joined in with our pleas. Half of them seemed to be helping us while the other half sounded as if they were mocking us. My heart seemed to beat faster with every sound they made.

  We stopped and waited for the last of the spybots to finish their cycle. I breathed a little easier when they were silent again. We listened carefully, but heard nothing from the other side of the door.

  Noah slid down the door and sat on the ground. “Sam and Amy know we’re here,” he said, hanging his head. “They’ll come looking for us eventually.”

  “Eventually, eventually.”

  I shivered. Who knows how long it would take for Sam and Amy to show up? The thought of spending more time trapped with the army of goblins moved me to act. I used my phone to scan the rest of the storage unit. There had to be something in here besides those creepy things. There were some legitimate storage items in the unit. Some cardboard boxes, some furniture. Unfortunately, whoever rented this unit didn’t need it to store an extra crowbar or two.

  I shook my head and moved back toward the main door. I used my flashlight to find the light switch. I flicked it on and the unit was awash with bright fluorescent lighting.

  I sighed with relief. Even though the sheer number of goblins ratcheted up their creep factor, the bright light took it back down again. Noah must’ve felt the same way. He blinked and then grinned.

  “Cool,” he said, getting to his feet.

  The goblin choir agreed with him.

  Noah moved to the back wall to ogle over something that I hadn’t noticed yet—two big, state-of-the-art 3-D printers. He ran his hand over one of them. “These are the new Technin one hundreds,” he said. “They’re supposed to be crazy fast.”

  “Fast, fast,” agreed the goblins.

  I looked up at the rows of creepy figures. “That’s how they made so many of them.”

  “Tom?” came a faint voice. “Noah?”

  Noah and I glanced at each other and then ran to the roll-up door and began banging again.

  “In here!” I shouted.

  “In here, in here,” repeated the goblins.

  “Guys? Are you in there?” Sam asked, followed by knocking from her side.

  Noah and I laughed.

  “Yes, in here!” Noah shouted. The goblins mimicked him.

  “Your dad brought us,” Sam said. “He’s going to go back and get some bolt cutters for the locks.”

  I remembered the lock I brought inside. “Wait a minute,” I said, grabbing the lock from beside the closed door.

  I checked the combination dial on the open lock. The numbers read: 2-0-0-5. That could have been someone’s birth year. That would make sense if the culprit was closer to my age.

  “Try two, zero, zero, five,” I suggested.

  “Zero, zero, five,” repeated the goblins.

  There was a pause and then…

  “That did it,” Sam announced.

  Noah and I laughed and pushed up on the metal door. It didn’t budge.

  “I thought you unlocked it,” I said.

  After the goblin chorus died down, Sam said, “Tell Amy you’re not mad anymore.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “What, what, what,” the goblins asked.

  “Cut it out, Sam,” I heard Amy say outside.

  “Tell Amy you’re not mad at her anymore,” Sam repeated.

  I sighed. I wasn’t mad at Amy anymore, but I was about to be mad at Sam.

  “I’m not mad anymore, Amy,” I said. The goblins repeated my words.

  “Is there an echo in there?” asked Sam.

  “Come on!” I said.

  “Come on, come on, come on.”

  “And tell her you’re sorry for being mean to her,” Sam ordered.

  I shook my head. “I was mean?”

  “Dude, do it. Just do it,” Noah said, rubbing his face in frustration.

  The goblins chanted their agreement. “Do it, do it, do it, do it.”

  My head dropped. “I’m not mad anymore. I’m sorry I was mean, and I’ll never do it again. Can you please let us out now?!”

  As the spybots finished their mockery of my apology, the door slid open. Sam stood there with a smug look on her face. Amy looked extremely embarrassed, while my dad frowned and shook his head.

  “Uh… we found the rest of your circuit boards,” I told him.

  13 The Entrapment Gambit

  NOAH AND I LOADED THE bikes into the trunk and my dad drove us home for cold pizza. To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t want us to grab any of the spybots from the storage unit. He had us lock the door and leave it just as we had found it. Even though someone had stolen the circuit boards from him, he said he couldn’t just steal them back. He had to get them back legally and not trespass onto private property to do it—something Noah and I had just done, he reminded us. It may take a while to discover who rents the storage unit, but he would figure it out and decide whether or not to get the police involved.

  “What is your company going to do with those circuit boards?” Noah asked between bites of pizza. “Are you going to spy on your employees?”

  “Oh, no,” my dad replied. “Nothing like that.”

  “It’s probably for some top-secret project,” Amy said, giving Noah a stern look.

  My dad shook his head. “No, not that, either.”

  “So you can tell us?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you four how industrial espionage is a genuine concern at our company.”

  “Oh, yeah,” agreed Sam.

  During a recent field trip to Swift Enterprises, the four of us (along with a couple of unexpected guests) helped stop a would-be techno thief from stealing company secrets.

  “Well, as you know, no recording devices are allowed past security,” my dad continued. “No phones, digital recorders, thumb drives, cameras.” He pointed toward the garage. “And from what you told me about those… spybots, if that was a real toy, you couldn’t bring something like that in, either.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But those circuit boards are made for recording.”

  My dad raised a finger. “Exactly. I wanted to create a proprietary digital recorder for all of our employees. This way, they can record notes, video, even store encrypted data, that all stays on the property.”

  Noah grinned. “And they’d all be linked together through the Wi-Fi network.”

  My father nodded.

  “And they’re GPS-tagged so you’d know if they leave the building,” Sam added.

  “All correct,” my dad said. “A few of us designed the motherboard but we outsourced their construction to an outside company to save time.”

  “So how did they get mixed up in all this?” I asked.

  My dad shook his head. “I’ve been back and forth with the shipping company all week,” he said. “And from what I can tell, the shipment was delivered to the doorstep of the Swift Academy by mistake. Not Swift Enterprises, just across the street.”

  Everyone exchanged knowing glances.

  “And some student found it,” Sam concluded.

  My dad nodded. “I think so. That’s what happens when you put too many intelligent, creative kids in one place.” He grinned and shrugged. “I should’ve seen it coming.”

 

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