Attack of the BULLIES

“Go away!”

“It was your anger. You might have been someone great, but you squandered it on rage.”

“Blah! Blah! Blah!”

Suddenly, Heathcliff found himself seated in a movie theater and the screen was alight with images of his future. He was happy. He was married with a little boy of his own, and he was teaching him about science and his favorite comic book characters. He had a great job, helping people at a laboratory that made medicine, and every night he went home, had di

The movie stopped, and when the lights came on he was surprised to see himself sitting next to him, and even more surprised to see that it was a version of him with his old enormous buckteeth.

“You gave that up,” the figure said. “You can’t blame the bullies for what has happened. You can’t blame Jackson Jones. You decided on this path. Does it make you happy?”

Heathcliff turned to his double. “No, it doesn’t but what can I do? I’m evil.”

“You stop.”

“Just stop?”

The boy nodded.

“Just stop. You have more important things to do, you know. It’s time to use that big brain for something good. Go save the world.”

Heathcliff woke with a gasp. Benjamin was hovering over him, zipping and shaking.

“If you move, I’ll blast you, kid,” he chirped.

“Want to help me save the world?”

Benjamin spun around but said nothing for a long moment. “Seriously?”

“C’mon!” Heathcliff cried. He darted out of the upgrade room. He raced down the hall and into the control center. “Benjamin, I need to see what our BULLIES are up to.”

A huge screen dropped from above and blinked to life. A TV news anchor stood in front of the school while the BULLIES—each one of them nearly three stories tall, attacked the building. Whatever they had done in the upgrade room had turned them into giants.

“OK, that’s not good,” he said. “All right, think. I’m the only member of the team in this time stream and my upgrades … no upgrades. There are four monsters attacking our school. Any suggestions?”

“We need more agents,” Benjamin said. “Should we call in some veterans?”

Heathcliff shook his head. “It would take them too long to get here and most of them are too old for the upgrade chair. What I need are some new recruits. But where …” He looked upward.

“Heathcliff?” Benjamin said with more than a little worry in his robotic voice, but Heathcliff was already racing toward the exit tubes.

He slammed a button on the podium and a second later he and Benjamin were sucked up into the lockers of Thomas Knowlton Middle School. Heathcliff blasted through the tiny door and into an empty hallway.

“Where is everybody?”

“My sensors are detecting a rather pungent smell,” Benjamin said.

“It’s called lunch,” Heathcliff said.

He ran down the hall and shoved open the double doors that led to the school cafeteria. His arrival was so loud that everyone turned to him.

“My name is Heathcliff Hodges and I’m a spy. Who wants superpowers?”

The kids looked at him as if he were one flapjack short of a stack.

“A little help here, Benjamin?” he begged.

The robot zipped around the room projecting images of Flinch, Pufferfish, Braceface, Gluestick, Wheezer, and Choppers fighting bad guys. “He’s telling the truth.”

All at once, every kid in the school jumped out of their seat and collectively shouted, “I do!”

“Follow me!” Heathcliff cried.

He ran back down the hall and threw his locker door open, shoving kids in one by one.

“Just to be clear, I think this is a terrible idea,” Benjamin said.

Heathcliff smiled. “Benjamin, this is the best idea I have ever had.”

Brand was very unhappy with where and when the time machine had taken him—Nathan Hale Elementary, May 1976. The school was still a construction site. Metal beams hung overhead and huge industrial machines were parked nearby. In a year, the school would open, and the NERDS would be born. But on this day there were no agents, no gadgets, and no fellow spies to help him stop Lisa Holiday.

“You’re too late,” she said. She was standing nearby with a sledgehammer resting on her shoulder.

“Am I?” Brand asked. “What is it you plan on doing?”

“Why, I’m going to destroy this site. I may not be able to erase your precious NERDS agents, but I can still make sure the organization was never born.” She swung the heavy hammer at him. He barely had time to step out of its way.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“Because I love you,” he said.

“And you think you can help me? So one day I’ll be better and you and I can … what? Get married? Have a family? Buy a house with a little picket fence and save the world on the weekends? That’s never going to happen, and it’s not because I’m so bad and you’re so good. It’s because I don’t care about you. I never cared about you. You were an assignment and I manipulated you.”

“I don’t believe that.”

She laughed. “You’re a fool. Do you know how many men I’ve done this to? You’re not special.”

The words stung him, but he kept moving toward her. “Even with that mask on, I can see you’re lying. You aren’t bad. You aren’t Miss Information. You’re a librarian who works at a school full of superpowered kids and you bake lousy deserts and worry too much.”

Miss Information buckled over in pain.

“Lisa!”

“These headaches! They confuse me,” she said. Her bitter tone was gone.

“It’s your mind rebelling against what you’ve become,” Brand said. “Let it go, Lisa. Let all of this go.”

“Alex? Please help me, Alex. I’m so confused.”

She reached up and removed her mask. There was the face that made him smile—the face that smoothed his rough edges—but she was in so much pain.

“It’s going to be OK,” he said, taking her into his arms.

He felt her jerk. Instinctively, he snatched her hand. There was a pipe in it.

“I almost got you!” she said with a wicked grin. She swung at him with her fists and he hobbled out of her reach. She leaped into the air with a foot aimed at his neck, but he batted it away and stepped to the side, grabbing the back of her hair and slamming her to the ground.

She hopped to her feet with unexpected agility and karate-chopped his belly. He bent over in agony and fell to avoid another kick, rolling away just as she stomped heeled boots where his neck had been. One boot got so close he had to catch it in his hands before it crushed his windpipe. He fought hard against it, thrusting upward and causing her to do a backflip in midair. She landed safely, but she was far enough away from him so that he had time to stand. He grabbed his cane and waved it at her.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he said.

The taunt sent her charging forward, but when she was close enough, he used the cane to catch her foot. A strong jerk and she was flat on her face. By the growl she let loose he could tell she was frustrated. Yes, get mad. Then you’ll make mistakes.

“Lisa—”

“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” she shrieked, racing at him like a runaway train. Her punches were fast and her feet faster. He blocked every attack, but each blow took more and more out of him. She pushed him backward, step-by-step, and finally he lost his footing, falling over a bag of concrete and slamming his head hard on a monkey wrench that was lying on the ground. He tried to stand, but his legs would not cooperate.

Miss Information grabbed a handful of electrical wiring and went to the time machine. She dipped one end of the wire into the ball pit and co

“Your little time machine is nothing more than a wormhole expander. I set it up to tear one into a ragged wound. The result will be a very big bang, sweetie. Once the battery cells overload, it will vaporize this site and stop your headquarters from ever existing.”