The Spybot Invasion Read online

  1 The Gravitation Acceleration

  “I KNOW I’M NOT THE one who usually says this, Tom,” Noah said. “But are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “No problem,” I replied confidently. I strapped the last section onto my forearm. “It worked just fine on the test dummy.”

  “But that was only off my back deck,” Noah explained. “This is a whole flight of stairs.”

  As I stood on the third-floor landing and looked into the stairwell, I realized my best friend might have a point. You see, I was about to test our latest invention—a full-body airbag—by flinging myself down a flight of stairs. You know how there are airbags in cars? Well, this would be a portable one that cyclists and motorcyclists could wear. It was a whole suit made up of several components that covered my entire body. Straps and wires snaked up my arms and legs, connecting several sections of clear plastic. It kind of looked like a weird, futuristic pants-and-jacket set.

  “The Wright brothers didn’t use a dummy,” I told Noah.

  “No, but they weren’t risking breaking their necks,” Noah replied. “Wait a minute. I guess they were.”

  “Dude, don’t worry,” I said. “I have complete confidence in your software.”

  Noah Newton was a programming genius. Using an old smartphone (which already had built-in motion sensors), Noah had written a program that would detect when I was falling. Then it would activate several tiny CO2 canisters spread throughout the special outfit I had designed.

  “Wait a minute,” Noah said, digging through his pocket. He pulled out his phone. “We need a video record of this.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I said, nodding past him.

  Several academy students were already gathering behind him with their phones at the ready.

  That was the cool thing about our school—you never knew what could happen from one day to the next. Well, I guess that’s just one of the cool things about our school. We’ve had an all-out robot war tournament for our robotics class. Our programming teacher actually encourages us to create apps for phones and tablets for extra credit. And yes, one of the students could perform a crazy experiment in the halls (or stairwells) at any moment. That’s the Swift Academy of Science and Technology for you.

  Oh, and yeah, I share a name with the school. My father, Tom Swift Sr., founded the academy with the profits from his next-door company, Swift Enterprises. Most people think it’s cool, but honestly, I usually wished people forgot about my connection to the school. I don’t want any special treatment, positive or negative. I just want to be an ordinary student like everyone else. Okay, I was about to fling myself down a set of stairs for science, but you know what? That is kind of ordinary for our school.

  I leaned over the railing and gazed at the second-floor landing. “Sam? Amy? All clear down there?”

  Sam poked her head out and adjusted her glasses. “I still think you’re nuts, Swift,” she called back up. “But yeah, it’s all clear.”

  Samantha Watson and Amy Hsu were blocking off the stairs on the second floor. Granted, there wasn’t much traffic in the stairwells during lunch hour, but you could never be too careful. I was wearing an airbag suit for my protection. Any unsuspecting student coming up the stairs wouldn’t be.

  Sam and Amy were good friends with Noah and me and were the last two members of the “formidable foursome,” as my dad liked to call us. Like all the other academy students, they were both crazy smart. Personally, I thought they were two of the smartest students in the school.

  I’m not a genius, or child prodigy by any means. I just enjoy coming up with cool inventions. Of course, as I looked down at the stairs below, and then back at the flimsy plastic covering my body, I was questioning my intelligence a bit.

  Our idea wasn’t completely new. Someone had already invented an inflatable airbag helmet for cyclists. Then, of course, there were avalanche airbags, which were special backpacks that skiers wore in avalanche-prone environments. If someone was caught in an avalanche, the backpack would expand to keep them from being crushed beneath several feet of heavy snow. Our idea was a combination of the two. It had the size of the avalanche bag yet the formfitting shape of the airbag helmet. Except our airbags covered the entire body, not just the head.

  “Well?” Sam asked from below. “Did you change your mind?” She crossed her arms and looked up with a skeptical expression. “It’s all right if you did, you know.”

  I shook my head and eased up to the first step. “Nope,” I replied. “We’re still a go.”

  Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely reckless. You see, I was sure the motion sensors and Noah’s program would work. But… just in case they didn’t, I had a backup plan. I reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a small tethered thumb switch. I could always activate the airbags manually if needed.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here goes…” I slowly leaned forward.

  “Uh, Tom,” Noah said. “Maybe we should run some more tests first.…”

  But it was too late. There was no stopping now. I bent my knees and elbows as I saw the stairs flying up toward my face. My heart beat faster, my body tensed, and I almost panicked and pressed the button. My thumb hovered over the switch.

  BAFF!

  The airbags inflated all over my body before I could press the button. A grin stretched across my face as I felt my limbs stiffen, the airbags keeping me completely immobile from head to toe. And when my body hit the first step, I barely felt the impact.

  “Yes!” Noah shouted from above.

  “It worked?” came Sam’s voice from below.

  “Oh yeah,” replied Noah.

  I was too busy laughing to add to Noah’s reply as I bounced harmlessly down the stairs. I was too immobile to steer, so I just went with it and tried to enjoy the bouncy roller-coaster ride. But when I hit the back wall and was supposed to stop, I ended up rebounding and began bouncing down the second set of stairs.

  “Coming to you, Sam!” Noah shouted.

  Have you ever worn one of those inflatable sumo-wrestler suits? The kind you and a friend wear and then bounce into each other? Well, I hadn’t, but I imagine that’s what this felt like. You take up way more space than you’re used to, and all the while looking kind of silly.

  My world was spinning as I tumbled down the next flight of stairs. I only caught blurry glimpses of Sam’s wide eyes and the crowd of students behind her holding up their phones. I must’ve looked something like a clear beach ball with a boy suspended inside.

  Sam turned to the crowd behind her and spread her arms wide. “Okay, everyone, get back!”

  She ushered the students away from the second-floor landing as I approached. I held my breath. It felt like I was gathering enough momentum to bounce off the landing and into the hallway itself. The last thing I wanted was to knock down a bunch of students as if they were bowling pins.

  Noah and I didn’t really have a plan to stop my descent. That was kind of my thing: Act first and figure the rest out later. I had assumed I would stop when I hit the first wall at the bottom of the first flight.

  As I bounced off the last step, I felt a hard jerk to one side. I must’ve hit the corner of the step at just the wrong angle, because I didn’t slide down the second-floor hallway as I thought I would. As embarrassing as that would’ve been, at least I would’ve stopped. No, I flew toward the stairwell wall, bounced off it, and began tumbling down the next flight of steps.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asked.

  “Can’t… steer,” I said as I bounded down the stairs.

  Okay, this wasn’t so fun anymore. My stomach was spinning almost as much as I was. I would be lucky to hold down breakfast when this was all over.

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; “Look… out…!” I said as I bounced down toward the next floor.

  None of us had anticipated going this far, so we didn’t have anyone holding back foot traffic coming up from the first floor. Terry Stephenson and Jamal Watts both hugged the wall as I tumbled past them. I would’ve felt embarrassed if my nausea wasn’t overshadowing everything else.

  I kept my hands in fists most of the time to keep from breaking one of my fingers. But whenever I thought it was safe, I reached out with my hand, trying to grab anything to slow me down—the handrail, the wall, anything.

  Luckily, I didn’t bounce off the landing between the first and second floor. I hit the angle just right and was almost standing straight up when I finally came to a stop against the wall. However, not being able to move, I couldn’t catch my balance and I fell onto my back. It didn’t hurt, though. In fact, nothing on my body hurt. I had just fallen almost three flights of stairs and I would’ve bet that I didn’t have a single bruise.

  My stomach was a different matter. It continued to turn as I lay there looking at an upside-down world. I hoped someone had the decency to turn me over if I started to hurl.

  I spotted two people running up to me. I don’t know if it was my nausea or the fact that everything was upside down, but I didn’t recognize them at first. A girl with long black hair ran up the stairs, followed by a woman with her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  “Tom! Are you all right?” the girl asked. My vision cleared and I realized that it was my friend Amy. Sam and Noah ran down the stairs followed by what seemed like the rest of the academy students.

  “Just a little… nauseated,” I replied.

  The woman reached down and squeezed the airbag surrounding my left arm. “How do you deflate this thing?” the woman asked. I realized that it was the school nurse, Ms. Ramos.

  “It was supposed to deflate after the first step,” I said.

  Ms. Ramos rolled her eyes and nodded to Noah and Sam. “All right, you two. Help us get him to my office.”

  I was too nauseated to argue.

  2 The Recovery Discovery

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE NOT going to be sick?” Ms. Ramos asked. She held out a kidney-shaped plastic basin.

  I waved it away with the fingers on my right hand. “No, I’m okay.” Even though I still felt a little queasy, the container looked way too small to do any good if I got sick.

  I sat hunched over on the edge of the exam table in the nurse’s office. My entire airbag suit was still inflated, so I was more propped on the edge than sitting.

  Ms. Ramos eyed me suspiciously as she pulled out a pair of medical shears. “You still look a little green.” She took the shears and carefully cut the clear plastic airbag helmet surrounding most of my head. Air hissed out as she moved on to my right arm. Once she pulled the deflated plastic away from my body, she produced an instant cold pack. She squeezed the pack and gave it a shake before placing it into my free hand. “Hold this to your forehead,” she said. “It’ll help.”

  As I placed the cool pack against my skin, Ms. Ramos put the shears to work again. She carefully deflated more airbag sections, and I let out a deep breath. The ice pack did work; I felt less nauseated.

  “What were you thinking, Tom?” Ms. Ramos asked. “You could’ve seriously hurt yourself.”

  “We already tested it on a dummy,” I explained. “It was time to test it on a real person.”

  Ms. Ramos shook her head. “Do you remember when I went to every class and showed you how to perform CPR?”

  “Yeah?” I said. I didn’t know where she was going with this.

  She continued to deflate more airbags. “Well, I didn’t demonstrate CPR on real people, did I?”

  “No,” I replied. “You used that dummy.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “You don’t test things like this on real people. I’ve actually performed CPR on a real person once, and even though it saved his life, it hurt him, too.”

  “You’ve done CPR for real?” I asked. “When was that?”

  Ms. Ramos continued to free me from my inflated airbags. “When I was the nurse at my last school, a man came to speak to the students. Unfortunately, his heart stopped and I had to perform CPR on him until the ambulance arrived.”

  “Wow,” I said. “So, you saved his life?”

  Ms. Ramos shook her head. “Yes, but that’s not the point.” She aimed the shears at me. “After everything he went through, the bruising from my chest compressions took the longest to heal.”

  “Yeah, but still,” I said. “You saved his life. That must’ve felt pretty good.”

  Ms. Ramos smiled. “At the time it was terrifying. But now, yeah, it does feel good.”

  I couldn’t even imagine doing something as big as saving someone’s life. Sure, Ms. Ramos had always done a great job taking care of us. Just last month she had performed the Heimlich maneuver on Charlie Wells when he was choking in the school cafeteria. But I can imagine that in a school like the academy, you’d never know what kind of injury a school nurse could run across. With everyone working on so many different inventions, experiments, and unusual school projects, Ms. Ramos might be treating small burns one day and minor frostbite the next. It felt… nice, having someone like her around.

  “I want to save someone’s life,” I said, almost without thinking.

  Ms. Ramos raised an eyebrow and paused her airbag-suit removal.

  “I—I mean,” I stammered. “I think it would be cool to come up with an invention that could save someone’s life.”

  She deflated the last part of my airbag suit. “Well, you’re off to a good start,” she said, then pointed to my arm. “These sections on your arms and legs are already similar to inflatable splints.”

  “That’s a thing already?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she replied. “For when someone breaks an arm or a leg. You blow the splint up and it keeps the limb immobile so you can move the patient.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to come up with something else.”

  She aimed her finger at me. “Promise me that you won’t go testing your inventions on yourself again.”

  I nodded. “I promise.”

  I held up my arm and looked at the tattered remains of my airbag suit. It seemed kind of pathetic now, but I wondered if this could be my lifesaving invention. How cool would that be? Maybe it would save someone in a motorcycle crash. Or maybe an experimental test pilot could use it.

  But this thing had a long way to go. I tugged at one of the clear strips hanging from my wrist. It’s back to the drawing board, as my dad would say. Not only did this thing not deflate when it was supposed to, but there are tons of different scenarios that I’d have to account for to trigger such a device. I’d have to think of some other way to come up with a lifesaving invention. My mind raced with concepts and ideas.

  Ms. Ramos put away the shears and reached out for my chin. She gently held it, turning my head slightly. “Your color is almost back to normal. How do you feel?”

  “Just a little queasy,” I said. I began to stand. “I’ll be fine.”

  The nurse placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “I think you should wait here just a bit longer. Want me to call your father?”

  My eyes widened. “No!” What was she doing? I thought she wanted my nausea to pass, not make it worse. “I mean, he’ll find out about everything soon enough. No sense in ruining his day.”

  And my day, too, I thought.

  She smiled and tousled my hair. “Okay, why don’t you relax and lie back for a few minutes to let your stomach settle?”

  I did as she instructed and closed my eyes. The cold pack felt soothing and the nausea continued to fade into nothingness. I heard Ms. Ramos milling around in her office before she left the room, and I lay alone in silence.

  I tried to think of other inventions that could possibly save lives. I dove headfirst into the middle of one of my favorite parts of inventing—brainstorming. Here there were no wrong answ
ers, no stupid ideas, and no limits. Could I invent a lifesaving drug? That would require years of medical school, but it was a possibility. Or I could always go the engineering route. Maybe I could create some sort of new surgical tool.

  I opened my eyes and gazed about her office. Two framed photographs sat on her nearby desk. One showed a young boy and a girl—maybe eight or nine years old. The other photo showed a grinning little girl who was almost a toddler, and I felt myself smiling back at her as she proudly stood for what might be one of the first times. These must’ve been Ms. Ramos’s kids. I wondered if they realized just how cool their mom really was.

  My smile faded when I spotted an odd plastic figurine next to the photos. It had a squat, cartoonish body and an oversize head, with two batlike ears pointing straight up. Its two devilish eyes seemed to stare back at me. But what was most unsettling was its devious expression, with its mouth in the shape of a circle as if it were saying, Oooooh.

  A small shiver went through my body. I reached over and spun the creepy figurine around so it faced the wall.

  3 The Reiteration Equation

  MS. RAMOS CUT ME LOOSE IN time to make the second half of my physics class. I was no longer nauseated but I decided to skip the stairs for the time being. I headed to the elevator instead. I stepped inside and pressed the button for the third floor.

  “Hold the door, please,” came a voice from the corridor.

  It was Tristan Caudle. I held back the doors as he glided into the elevator in his wheelchair. Jake Mahaley jogged in behind him. I expected to get some ribbing for my tumble down the stairs, but we rode the elevator up in silence.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Jacob said suddenly. “I swear.”

  “Well then how else did he find out?” Tristan snapped back.

  I nervously took half a step back from the bickering students. “Uh… is everything all right?” I asked.

  “Everything’s just great,” Tristan said, rounding on me. “If getting a day’s detention for calling Mr. Edge a moron is all right.”