FOR EVERY KID OF ANY AGE WHO SEEKS KNOWLEDGE AND ADVENTURE
—B.N.
In the alley, Fred hovered above us, awaiting instructions. His four spinning blades buzzed like dragonflies. Ava tapped the cracked screen of her old smartphone, then dragged her finger slowly from the bottom to the top. Fred rose higher. "Should I start?" Ava asked.
"Absolutely," I said.
Matt leaned forward and looked over at me, his head tilted slightly. "You're sure this is legal, Jack?"
Nope. Definitely not. I'd already checked, and this sort of thing was completely against the law. But the neighborhood wasn't even awake yet. There was no one around to catch us, and we absolutely had to find out what was going on in the building across the street. "It's totally fine," I lied. "Trust me."
Fred spun, tilted forward, and zoomed toward his target. Did I mention that he was a robot? A plastic cube, basically, along with a camera, some electronic brains, motors and batteries, and miniature fans attached to four mechanical arms. A pretty simple drone, I guess, until you figure that my twelve-year-old sister built him from scratch. At our kitchen table. From a collection of spare parts.
The name was Ava's choice, and although Matt guessed the initials stood for Flying Robotic Electronic Drone, she swore she just liked the name Fred. By that point she'd also built a dangerously fast motorized skateboard called Pedro and a talking toaster named Bob. Pedro had sent me tumbling into a pile of overstuffed trash bags a few weeks earlier, and poor Bob exploded after some sesame seeds caught fire. That was a real shame. I liked Bob. He had a nice, light touch with bagels.
As Fred flew higher, my brother and sister huddled around the screen of her laptop, but I crept out of the alley and watched the robot approach the strange building. We live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, across the East River from New York City, and new apartments and offices are always popping up around us. Most of them are pretty similar, but then this one went up last year that was just plain weird. Ten stories tall and skinny, the outside a chessboard of reflective-glass windows, the top floor covered with a ring of solar panels that resemble some kind of high-tech headband. The structure has no front door. Or back door. Or side door. No entrance or exit at all. None of the windows ever open, and because they reflect light like mirrors, you cannot see inside. A balcony was tucked into the north side of the building on the third floor, but did we ever spot anyone up there? An old lady in her flowery bathrobe drinking coffee? A bald man in a ribbed tank top scratching his hairy armpits as he stretched? A kid braiding the fur of her pet llama? Nope. Not once.
So we'd started guessing what really went on inside. Hypothesizing, as Matt would say. I was hoping the new tower was the headquarters of an evil billionaire plotting world domination. Ava suggested it might be an internationally renowned superspy's secret office. But Matt's bet was typically logical. He said some company probably kept its computers there.
After we'd been watching the building for months without discovering a single clue, I begged Ava to use Fred. I bribed her. I pleaded. Once I even pretended to cry. Eventually she agreed, and now our mechanical spy was rising up toward that third-floor balcony. I rushed back into the alley. The screen of Ava's laptop showed the view from the robot's camera, so we could watch the scene from Fred's perspective.
Ava used her smartphone to steer him forward for a closer look at the balcony. I held my breath.
And I sighed.
No spy telescope. No jet-pack landing pad. No laser gun mounted on a swiveling turret. And certainly no llama.
"Told you," Matt said. "It's a data center."
Ava leaned my way and started to explain. "That's where companies house the servers they—"
"I know." To be honest, I didn't know, but it's super annoying to have your genius brother and sister teaching you stuff all the time.
Something flashed across Ava's screen. "Wait, what was that?" she asked.
I ran back out onto the sidewalk and stared across the street. Fred was gone. A glass door to the balcony was open for the very first time, but no one was in sight, and I couldn't see inside, either. Had Fred fallen? There was no sign of him on the pavement below the building. I held my breath and listened, but I couldn't hear the buzz of his fans.
Returning to the alley, I peered over my sister's shoulder just as the robot's camera view went dark. The signal on the laptop blinked out. "Fred!" Ava cried.
"What just happened?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I think someone inside grabbed him."
My heart started pounding. Ava had spent months constructing that robot. She'd worked so hard and grown so frustrated that I'd actually caught her eyes tearing up once or twice. And my sister never cried. Still, she'd stuck with it, and once Fred flew, she was as happy as I'd ever seen her. Now the drone was gone, and it was all my fault.
Ava slammed her laptop shut with unusual force, shoved it into her shoulder bag, and stomped out of the alley. One side of her mouth peaked into an angry snarl.
"Wait!" I said. "Where are you going?"
"To get Fred."
I followed her across the pothole-lined street. "What are you going to do?"
She locked her fingers and cracked her knuckles. "Shout, yell, make some noise until someone answers."
"You'll wake the whole neighborhood."
"Too bad. I'm getting Fred back."
As we squeezed between two parked cars with dented bumpers, I stared up at the balcony. "Let me try something first."
"It's not like there's a front door," Matt called out from a few steps behind us. "You can't just knock, you know."
No, but I could climb. Most of my experience was with trees, as I'd spent pretty much all of third and fourth grade hiding from my foster family in a backyard oak. Normally I only scaled buildings when we locked ourselves out of our apartment, but this was an exception. I hurried ahead of Ava and inspected the building's walls up close. The edges of the square windows were deep enough to grip. The building sloped in slightly as it rose, so I wouldn't be going straight up. I was sure I could make it. And if someone yelled at me? I was just a kid trying to get his toy robot back.
Matt leaned back against the building, clasped his hands, and held them at his waist. I tightened my shoelaces, grabbed his shoulders, planted my right foot in his hands, and pushed myself up. At fifteen, my older brother was already taller than most adults, so he was a good ladder, and the climbing was easier than expected. The window edges were a few inches deep. The big problem was the windows themselves. You couldn't see through them from the outside, but they were also strangely slippery, as if they were coated with some kind of invisible grease.
"What's wrong?" Ava asked.
I told her. Matt ran one finger across the glass, then waved it below his nose and dabbed it against his tongue. "Interesting," he said. "No smell. Not much of a taste, either." He walked a few feet and swiped another pane. "All the windows seem to be coated with it."
"I wonder why," Ava said.
"Maybe it's to prevent people from climbing," he said.
"Thanks," I said. "That's really encouraging."
Moving slowly, I focused on my grip. Between the first and second floors I stopped to rest.
"How much farther?" I asked.
"Three meters," Matt said.
"Or about the height of a basketball hoop," Ava translated. "Be careful, Jack. Take your time."
"But hurry up," Matt said.
A car turned the corner and started rolling toward us.
"Act natural!" Ava said.
She faked a laugh. Matt copied her. My task was a little more difficult. How are you supposed to act natural when you're clinging to the side of a glass building at six in the morning?
The car cruised past without slowing, but the neighborhood was definitely coming to life. Delivery trucks were rumbling down the avenue a block away. A small bell chimed as the owner of the German deli across the street propped open his door. I needed to hustle.
An arm's length from the balcony, I reached for the next window edge, and the fingers of my right hand slipped. I tried to push them against the glass, hoping to stop myself from swinging. But my right hand slid like a hockey puck across a frozen pond. The fingers of my left hand lost their hold. My feet lost contact with the building. And a second later I was airborne, falling backward—a bird without wings.
My landing pad was going to be a wide square of concrete. I wrapped my head in my bare arms and shut my eyes hard.
Matt shouted.
Ava yelled.
But the sound of their cries was muffled by an explosive hiss.
I braced for a brutal slam against the pavement, then hit ... something else. Instead of smashing down onto the concrete, I bounced. In midair again, I opened my eyes and glanced down. The hiss had been the sound of some kind of cushion inflating, and now I was gently bouncing to a stop on what looked like a bouncy house from a kindergartener's birthday party. The material was smooth to the touch and almost shiny. I rolled off the cushion.
My siblings' eyes were as big as golf balls.
"Did that really just happen?" Ava asked.
"I would've caught you," Matt said.
No way he could have caught me.
The three of us leaped back as the lifesaving surface collapsed. Within seconds it was completely deflated. Then the building started to slurp it up like a strand of spaghetti, sucking it back inside through a slit near the sidewalk, just below the first row of windows. Ava pointed, speechless. The gap was smaller than a mail slot. Once the cushion was completely coiled back into the building, Matt crouched forward to peer through the tiny opening. But before he had the chance to see inside, a steel panel slid shut. Whatever had saved me from broken bones or worse was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
Matt pulled at his hair with both hands. "I don't like this," he said.
"Why not? That was awesome," I said.
"Someone must be watching us." Matt turned, scanning the block, then scowled in the direction of the alley across the street. "That camera over there, on the fire escape. Was that there before?"
He pointed at a black device about the size of an energy-drink can, with a lens at the top. Who cared about some security camera? I'd just been saved by a magical cushion after falling thirty feet off the side of a building!
"I would've noticed," Ava said.
The camera suddenly unfurled two long black wings, sprang off the fire escape, glided downward, then flapped like a mechanical hawk, narrowly dodging the roof of a rusted van parked at the corner. The flying camera soared higher as it crossed the road, swooped over our heads, then dipped again and dropped straight onto the balcony of our mystery building.
"Whoa."
"Let's get out of here," Matt said. He grabbed the back of my shirt.
"You two can go," Ava said. "But I'm getting Fred back."
She walked along the side of the building, leaning in close to look for another opening. At a few points she knocked. She pushed against one of the windows as if it might pop open. Matt kept turning and glancing over his shoulder. Maybe he was worried that a fleet of black cars was going to roar up, screech to a stop at the curb, and spit out a dozen secret agents in dark glasses. Or maybe that was just me.
"We already looked for a door," I reminded Ava.
"Maybe we missed something." She raised her eyebrows at Matt. "Are you going to help or just stand there looking scared?"
"Fine," Matt barked back.
As my brother crossed the road for a different view of the building, I wondered if there was an easier solution. What if we just had to ask nicely? I pulled out my pocket-size spiral notebook, dashed out a quick but sincere apology to the owner of the building, and tore the page loose. At the curb I found a chunk of asphalt about the size of a large green grape, wrapped the paper around it, aimed, and tossed my message up toward the balcony. Once the little rock left my hand, I wondered whether I should've stopped to think through my plan. An apology delivered by broken window probably wouldn't be that effective. I closed my eyes and winced, waiting for the sound of shattering glass. Thankfully, my message landed safely.
On the street. But on my third attempt I succeeded. Without breaking a single pane.
Ava returned to the front of the building. "What did you just do?" she asked.
"Nothing," I lied.
"Hey," Matt said, crossing back over to our side of the street. "Follow me. I think I know the way in."
"What? How?" Ava asked.
We waited as a blue minivan clunked down the street. Then Matt explained as he led us back across the street to the alley. "I was thinking about rabbits."
"Rabbits?" I asked.
"Yes, and their warrens in particular. For safety reasons they have multiple entrances and exits to their homes, and none are right next to the main living area."
"You think rabbits live in there?" I asked. The words were hardly out of my mouth before I started wishing I could reel them back in unsaid.
"No, Jack," Matt said. "I don't think that building is occupied by giant hyper intelligent bunnies."
I tried to stop myself from imagining those rabbits. I was unsuccessful. Would they still eat carrots? Would they order takeout from the burrito place up the block? Would they wear tuxedos? Yes. They would absolutely prefer elegant evening attire.
Naturally Ava understood what Matt was trying to say. "So the front door is here across the street?" she asked. "But where?"
"Well, rabbits cover their entrances with leaves and brush—the sort of thing you'd normally find around a field or lawn or hill."
Now I was really lost.
"The Dumpster?" Ava guessed, pointing.
"Exactly," Matt said. "It's the sort of thing you'd expect to find in an alley." He hurried over and tapped the side with his fingers. "Look. The paint has barely been scratched. I bet it's not even a Dumpster at all. What if it's some kind of elevator?"
I opened the container's heavy black lid. A hurricane of horrible smells attacked my nostrils. The stench was like a combination of rotting ham sandwiches and spoiled milk. "Nope, it's definitely a Dumpster."
My brother's shoulders sank. "Really?"
"Wait." Ava was crouching at the base. "This thing is on rails, and there's some kind of electric motor under here. But I can't figure out how to activate it."
Ava swept her fingers along the underside of the Dumpster. Matt checked near the lid, then ran his hands across the logo painted on the left side.
"What does H-W-I stand for?" I asked.
"I don't know," Matt said, "but look closely at the i."
The dot above the lowercase letter was actually a small square piece of see-through plastic, with a red button behind it. Matt and Ava both stood frozen, unwilling or unable to take the next step. See, that's one of my roles. When you hang out with geniuses, it's hard to find a way to be useful. So I plan. I scheme. Occasionally I talk my siblings into situations they'd avoid on their own. But that never feels like enough, so I'm usually the one who takes the risks. Sometimes that means testing a rocket-powered skateboard named Pedro. Sometimes it means jabbing at a cleverly hidden button to see what happens next.
I used a fingernail to pry open the plastic cover, pushed the red button with my thumb, then jumped back as the Dumpster instantly slid to my left along the alley wall, revealing a large rectangular hole in the pavement and a set of aluminum stairs. While Matt and I stared in shock, Ava started right down. "I'm coming to get you, Fred," she called.
"Wait—" Matt said.
There was no point trying to stop Ava. Her boots clanged on the metal stairs as she descended. Matt followed. Three steps down he tripped and had to grab the railing to prevent himself from tumbling to the bottom. Poor Matt. His feet had stretched two sizes since the winter, and he was still figuring out how to steer them around. Normally I laughed when he stumbled, so he glared up at me immediately. I held up my hands. "I didn't say anything!"
The air inside was cool but not cold; it smelled slightly of bleach. Dull yellow lights shined below us. Halfway down the stairs, I nearly leaped when the Dumpster above slid back over the opening in the pavement. Ava didn't react, though, so I certainly wasn't going to admit to being petrified.
The stairs stopped at the top of an enormous escalator rolling down into total darkness. We paused. I tried to look tough but cool, like one of those old-fashioned fighter pilots in their leather jackets and dark sunglasses.
"Jack, do you need to go to the bathroom?" Matt asked.
Apparently my "tough" face wasn't working.
"We're not going down there, are we?" Matt asked Ava.
"You can wait here if you want," Ava said.
After matching deep breaths, my brother and I followed her. Lights began brightening in front of us, dimming at our backs. Ava was smiling when she turned around. "Smart lighting. Sensors activate the bulbs when you get close."
The escalator ended two or three stories down, but another was right beside it. The air had a dusty and metallic smell now, and Matt guessed we were a hundred feet below the pavement when we finally reached the bottom—a square platform I could cross in three steps. The air was colder here; I shivered. In front of us was a normal-looking door. Neither of my siblings moved. I raised an eyebrow and looked at each of them. They shrugged.
My turn again.
I pushed through the door. It closed behind us. The carpeted room was shaped like a hexagon. Three sides had wide, deep, and very comfortable-looking blue couches. One of the other walls had a door with a long desk posted in front. To our left was a powerful-looking steel door with a painting of a dog hanging beside it. A schnauzer, I think.
I walked toward that door. The carpet was soft. It smelled new.
"No company name or anything, huh?" Ava noted.
"Maybe it really is a spy's headquarters, Ava," I said.
I scanned a pile of packages, letters, and thick catalogs on the floor below the dog portrait. Each was addressed to one of several different "H.W.I." companies. The only label with a person's name on it was a return address stuck to a yellowing envelope that looked like it had gotten into a street fight with a dozen other letters. The envelope was wrinkled, torn in places, and dotted with dried mud. The sender's name was Anna Donatelli, and her return address was Antarctica. "Check this out," I said. "A letter from the North Pole."
Matt walked over. "Antarctica is the South Pole," he said.
Sometimes I wished they'd just let me be wrong.
Matt pressed his head against the wall, inspecting the dog painting from the side. Then he held his hand below it. Smiling, he lifted the picture frame from the bottom. It swung open, revealing a metal chute.
"Cool way to get your mail," Ava remarked.
The door behind the desk opened with a low hiss. I resisted the urge to hide behind one of my siblings.
We waited. Nothing happened.
"Hello?" Matt called out. "We're sorry to bother you, but we're trying to find my sister's ..."
His words trailed off as a tall red robot wheeled into the room. After living with Ava for almost two years, I knew it was a humanoid—a machine with two arms, a head, and two eyelike cameras. But she'd never shown me any videos of one like this before.
Matt apologized again, speaking slowly and clearly so the robot could understand him.
In a flat, emotionless voice the machine asked, "What are you doing here? This is private property."
Ava was smiling. "You can chat? That's amazing. We're sorry to intrude, but I lost my—"
"What are you doing here? This is private property. What are you doing here? This is private property." The robot began repeating itself, speaking faster each time.
"Something's wrong with its code," Ava said.
"Or it's angry," I suggested, backing toward the door to the stairs. I tried to turn the handle. "Uh, guys, the door's locked."
The robot moved out from behind the desk, rolling toward us on three large wheels, repeating its words faster and faster. A red light on its chest began flashing.
"Ava, what does that mean?" Matt asked.
"How should I know?"
"I think it means we need to find another way out," I said.
Matt sidestepped over to the steel door and pressed a circular button beside its frame.
The robot's light flashed brighter. Now its words were jammed together into a single crazed stream. "Whatareyoudoingherethis ..."
With a slow creak, the steel door slid open, revealing an old-fashioned elevator car. Matt grabbed me and practically tossed me inside, then pulled Ava by the back of her shirt. "Get in! Get in!"
The humanoid opened a compartment in its chest.
The elevator door was closing at the pace of a garden-slug race. The robot pulled something out and flung it at us. I ducked the shot, and a yellowish clump splattered on the dark-wood paneling behind me. The elevator door was barely halfway closed. The robot was rolling closer. The machine threw something, striking Matt in the chest. My brother shouted and fell to the floor.
Ava kicked the door with the heel of her boot. Finally it slammed shut. The elevator lurched, and we felt ourselves riding up. Matt grabbed a clump of yellowish stuff from his shirt and hurled it against the wood paneling. It fell to the floor with a splat.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
He scooted away, pressing himself against the wall. Ava looked more bewildered than frightened. A big chunk of the stuff was hanging from the paneling behind me, too, and I reached out to touch it.
"Jack, no!" Matt said. "It could be toxic."
I leaned in closer and sniffed. The scent was familiar. I peeled the stuff from the wall, bit off a chunk, chewed, then spat it out. In our little family, I'm the closest thing to a cook, and this particular substance was the basis of one of my signature meals. "It's just pizza dough," I said.
"So was that some kind of pizzabot?" Matt asked.
The elevator clanked to a stop before Ava could reply. The door rolled open and we stepped into a storeroom of some kind. The walls were lined with shelves. We were surrounded by jars of pickles and mayonnaise, plastic tubs of sauerkraut, and loaves of white bread. Matt slapped me on the shoulder with the back of his hand. He breathed out, long and hard, then smiled. "See? Multiple ways in and out, like rabbits."
There was a swinging wooden door on the other side of the storeroom. Ava nudged it open, and we stepped into the back of a deli that stank of burned coffee. Behind the counter, the German deli owner, with his long moustache and mustard-stained apron, started shouting at us, waving a long loaf of unsliced bread. So we ran. Out through the deli's front door, past the alley, around the corner. Despite his athletic frame, my brother is challenged as a runner. Normally he'd eat it at least twice on a sprint that long. For once, though, I was glad Matt didn't trip and fall, and we put at least four blocks behind us before we stopped.
Between breaths Matt asked, "How ... in the world ... did all that just happen?"
I was still too startled to speak. The lifesaving cushion. The flying security camera. The Dumpster entrance to a secret room. The attack by a pizza-dough-flinging robot. Honestly, I was still processing everything, and my heart was racing with a mix of excitement and fear. But my sister was somewhere else emotionally. The thrill of escape had faded. Now all that was left was disappointment. Her eyes were slightly closed. Her mouth formed a flat line. While Matt and I had just survived a strange and wild adventure—a morning like none other—Ava had lost a friend. I was responsible. And I had to find a way to get Fred back.
