The Doublecross (12 page)

“Congratulations,” I said. I walked to the couch and flopped down next to her. “I'm sure you'll pass. You'll be a great junior agent.”

This was true—I was sure she would pass. And I was sure she would be a great junior agent.

Which terrified me.

Timing is everything to a spy.

One second too early, you get spotted. One second too late, you miss a brush pass. I didn't just need the right second, though—I needed the right
day
.

The trouble was, agents—especially junior agents—didn't typically get a lot of lead time on missions. My
parents were usually notified the day of for a domestic mission; for an international mission, if they were lucky, they might get twenty-four-hours' notice. It made sense for Fishburn to keep information close—he often said, “The more moving parts, the more things there are to break.” Too many people involved with mission details, and there was too big a chance of something accidentally getting leaked or discovered or hacked and wrecking the entire thing.

So, I had to wait.

“No double cuts, and if it blows, you start over,” Otter barked at us on Friday, like we'd offended him just by showing up for class. We were diffusing mock bombs, and I was pleased to see Walter was failing miserably. His bomb blew up three times before I'd even begun, largely because he wasn't taking the time to work out how it was wired—he was just hacking and hoping for the best. Luckily for him, these weren't actual explosives—they were just computer programs that flashed the word “boom” at you and played a cheesy exploding sound if you messed up.

The fake bomb in front of me had a half dozen wires strung between the cylinders of metal. The wires were a mess—tangled and knotted together, and the ends were stripped of their colors so that you couldn't always tell which color wire really was connected to what. A timer had been fixed to it, which was new to us, and it made the whole diffusing thing a whole lot harder.

Walter blew up again.

I inched my fingers into the bomb, reaching for the pink wire that was lodged down by the bottom. That controlled the bulk of the device, so surely it was a good place to start. I reached in and clipped it. Nothing happened. I grinned and turned to look at the timer . . .

I blew up.

“Oops,” said Michael—one of the Foreheads. “Butterfingers, Hale?” Walter snorted in response and the two of them did some sort of handshake that involved both chest- and fist-bumping.

“Butterfingers? Nope,” I muttered, clipping a different wire. I paused.

It didn't blow.

My computer screen turned bright green. I pushed my chair back and folded my arms.

“Don't look so happy with yourself,” Walter told me. “Come next Friday, you'll still be here, making latte runs while I'm in the field on an actual
mission
.”

“What, like interviewing kids at a chess championship?” I muttered under my breath. Walter's first junior agent mission had been a few months back, and it hadn't exactly been a riveting page-turner.

Walter glowered but didn't say anything else. Instead he cut another wire and his screen turned green. It was only a moment later that most of the class's screens did. Cameron, the other Forehead, was last. I thought it was pretty ridiculous that no one got mocked for coming in last place
here
. Otter walked to the main computer and typed in a few things; our bombs reset, with different parameters this time, and we began again.

I beat my classmates every time, but I hardly noticed. My mind was on the mission—my mission for The League. But moreover, whatever mission Walter planned on going on next Friday.

Walter wouldn't be going. But if everything went perfectly,
I
would be.

While most everyone at SRS ate dinner in their apartments, lunch was pretty much always eaten in the cafeteria. No one wanted to run back to their apartments, eat, and then rush back to class or work or Central Asia, so everyone was willing to muddle through whatever super-healthy and super-tasteless combination of foods the nutritionists had drummed up. After Thursday's morning classes—during which Walter managed to take his shirt off not once, but twice—we all walked to the lunchroom in a pack, Otter trailing along behind us. I kept pace with the others. Then, when we cleared the cafeteria doors, I hurried ahead in the line.

Mission: Get sent on Friday's mission
Step 1: Wait for chili day

Four-bean chili was famous at SRS, because it was the closest thing the nutritionist would make to junk food. Sure, it was meatless and cheeseless, and the nutritionist was always trying to convince you that soft tofu was a perfect topping, but
still
. In a sea of salads and fish cakes, chili was precious. No one missed getting at least one bowlful.

Today was chili day.

A few ladies from Enemy Surveillance were already eating but rose when we jostled our way toward the soup station. They looked annoyed that a bunch of kids were interrupting their lunch break. I got to the serving counter first, grabbed a bowl, and reached for the ladle. Cameron pressed in close behind me, like if he didn't practically stand on my shoulder bones, he might miss out.

Step 2: Force proximity

Proximity was key for this sort of trick. The closer you were to someone, the less they could see. Everyone knew that—in fact, everyone at SRS knew this
entire
trick, since we learned it in year three. But since it didn't involve explosions, daring escapes, or fancy codes, I suspected my classmates wouldn't even realize I was pulling one over on them.

“Back off,” I huffed at him, taking my time lifting the lid from the pot of chili.

“Come on, Hale,” Cameron said, rolling his eyes at me. “You're holding everyone up.”

Step 3: Create a diversion

I lowered the ladle into the chili, scooped up a serving, and brought it toward my bowl. I let the ladle strike the side of the pot, spilling about half of its contents over the edge and onto the floor. Cameron behind me jerked backward so the splatter didn't get him, forcing those behind him to do the same.

“Careful, man!” he shouted, and a few of the people in the back of the line craned their necks to see what the holdup was all about.

“It's your fault! You're right on top of me. What's your problem?” I said, trying to puff myself up the way Otter did when he was angry (take a moment to be as freaked out as I was to be acting like Otter
on purpose
). Cameron's eyes jolted from the ground to mine, challenging me. Which meant I had the last thing I needed to pull this off.

Step 4: Get their attention

You couldn't keep your eyes on someone
and
on the giant vat of chili.

“That was rude. You should apologize,” Cameron said
threateningly. At this, the line behind him went silent. I hesitated.

“Whatever. Fine. I'm sorry,” I said swiftly. Then I broke our eye contact and returned the ladle to the chili, scooping up a small bowlful. I hurried to grab a seat while the rest of the class filed through the line. Otter finished flirting with the nutritionist and followed behind them. Soon the other classes started filing in—the eleven-year-olds, then the ten-years-olds, and then Kennedy's class of nine-year-olds. They all took big bowlfuls of chili.

Step 5: Everyone enjoys four-bean chili

Well, technically, it was now
five
-bean chili, since I'd managed to dump nearly the entire bag of JellyBENs into the vat during the diversion. They sank down into the chili while I held eye contact with Cameron. And now they were being eaten by every single person at SRS. Including me.

I dug my spoon in and took a few bites. I could taste the bright flavor of the JellyBENs, but only because I was looking for it. I lifted my eyes to make sure the rest of my classmates were eating as enthusiastically as expected on chili day. They were; in fact, some were nearly finished with their first serving. So far, this was going perfectly. I just hoped there were enough that everyone got at least one.

Someone screamed.

It was a junior agent, a girl from my class with pretty
hair. Personally, I thought her hair looked even prettier complimented by the lavender shade her skin was turning, but based on the horrified looks she was giving her ever-purpling palms, she disagreed.

“Is she choking?” someone shouted.

“Does she need mouth-to-mouth?” Michael shouted louder.

“Don't you dare!” the girl shrieked back. “What's happening? What—”

Another shriek. This time from a boy a year younger than I was, who was now the sort of flat color of squashed plums. Then Michael himself turned, then Otter, then . . .

I looked down and suppressed a grin. My hands were turning a now-familiar shade of violet.

Step 6: Everyone turns purple

Someone went running to get the on-call nurses, who then ran in with bags full of shots and wraps and pills, none of which were especially useful against a plague of purple. They sealed off the doors, just in case whatever we had was contagious, but it didn't take long for everyone to figure out that whatever it was, it had to do with the food. The nurses picked through the remains of the chili vat, but it was mostly empty. When they looked at the pot the nutritionist had been moments from bringing out, they found nothing but four kinds of regular old beans swimming in a thick
broth. Still, they took samples, which they passed off to a few agents from chem lab for testing.

“I told Dr. Fishburn! I told him to stop getting chemical shipments through the kitchen doors! This was bound to happen!
Bound to happen!
” the nutritionist cried as she flipped through her recipe book frantically, like she'd somehow missed a note that warned “may cause purple.” I felt a little bad about how upset she was, but given how often she tried to pass off cucumbers as a dessert item, my guilt didn't last long. I sat back. A few people had apparently missed out on getting a JellyBEN in their chili—but luckily for me, they were mostly the nine-year-olds. Otter was a particularly rotten-looking color, but oddly, it suited him, though he looked a little bit like a walking tomato as he frantically talked to Fishburn over a com unit.

“Hale!” someone shouted beside me. I spun around—it was Kennedy, who was almost neon purple. Added to her bright red hair, she looked like some kind of exotic flower.

“Don't worry, Kennedy—” I began, but Kennedy cut me off with a big grin.

“I'm not worried! This is awesome! Hey—wait. Yours is fading!”

“Huh?”

Kennedy motioned at me, and I looked down. Sure enough, the purple was fading slowly, just like it had back at The League. First my nose, then my cheeks and ears. It was another two hours before the color was gone entirely,
but by the time they let us out of the cafeteria, I was completely normal-colored. The nurses swarmed me.

“Huh,” said the oldest nurse, a woman with wispy gray hair and big glasses. “I guess he metabolized it quicker. Makes sense—he's a bigger guy than the rest of them.”

“You're saying Hale isn't purple anymore because he's Hale the Whale?” Walter asked, laughing.

I lifted an eyebrow at him. “You look like an Easter egg, and you're making fun of
me
?”

Walter sniggled to a stop and rolled his eyes, but I saw his ego deflate a little. It was very satisfying.

Walter and the other purple people walked out of the cafeteria.

Otter stepped though the crowd. I hadn't even realized he was still here. “Hale! Dr. Fishburn and I will need to talk with you. His office, thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, nodding. It was hard not to grin—my plan was working.

I walked Kennedy back to our apartment, where Ms. Elma was waiting for us. She didn't believe in taking lunch breaks, so she'd been spared the whole incident. She acted like Kennedy hadn't tried hard enough
not
to turn purple. I made it back to Fishburn's office just a few moments early and sat down by the door, leaning my back against the sleek frosted glass that made up the administrative sector. I could hear Fishburn talking with someone—I think the nutritionist?—on the other side.

Down the hall, another door opened. I leaned forward to see who it was, then tightened my chest to hold in a groan. Mrs. Quaddlebaum, wearing a suit so stiff that it looked a little like a beetle's shell. She gave me a firm stare as she passed, clutching several folders to her chest. She was the assistant director—did she know about my parents being In the Weeds? Did she know that SRS was really the criminal organization? It was impossible to tell.

Walter was just behind his mom. His skin was a particularly feminine shade of purple, like the color of fancy eye makeup or expensive flowers. Walter scowled at me and continued on after his mother; just as he reached the door that led out of the administrative sector, he stopped. I saw him argue with himself for a moment, looking at the ceiling and tapping his toes. Eventually, he glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Uh, I'm . . . I'm real sorry to hear about your parents, Hale,” he said swiftly.

“Thanks.” It wasn't until the word left my mouth that I realized I was saying it, and it hung in the air between us, inflated by ten years of being friends and one of being mortal enemies. It felt like one of us should say something else, but what? We'd already fought about Walter ditching me. We'd had shouting match after shouting match about how “people change” and “it's not like we
wanted
to be best friends, we just ended up that way.”

So there was nothing left, really. Walter pulled open the door and shut it behind him.

I puzzled in the quiet for a second, but then the door to Fishburn's office swung open. The nutritionist stepped out cradling her cookbooks and sniffling to herself. I rose and walked in; Otter was sitting in a chair by Fishburn's desk.