The Drone Pursuit Read online

“Can’t you see on your viewscreen?” asked Amy. “About half power.”

  She was correct, of course. The little battery icon at the bottom of the screen was halfway filled in. Once it was nearly dead, it would be replaced by a blinking red light.

  “No, I think it’s just about gone,” I said with a grin.

  While I continued to crawl down the hallway, I slowly jiggled the throttle joystick. The image in my viewscreen wobbled up and down.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Noah.

  “I don’t get it,” said Sam. “Amy said you’re at half power.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “But they don’t know that.”

  I jiggled the joystick some more, all the while using less and less throttle. The drone slowly lowered to the ground.

  “This is a big gamble,” Noah warned.

  He was right, but I didn’t see any other way past them. I decreased the throttle more and more until the drone was on the floor. I made it bounce up a few times to really sell it. I also left the propellers running, but not enough to get the drone airborne. If Noah’s sound filter wasn’t so good, I’m sure we could have heard the four motors pathetically winding down.

  The mystery man lowered his makeshift weapons. “Ha! I knew it was only a matter of time.” He aimed one of the broom handles down at the drone. “My kid has one of these. The batteries don’t last so long. And you’ve had this in storage for a couple of days now?”

  Mr. Conway nodded.

  The other man crept closer, staring down at the drone. He extended the broom and gave the drone a shove. The view shifted right as the bristles nudged the camera lens.

  “Tom . . . ,” said Noah.

  “Poker face, dude,” I told him.

  Mr. Conway lowered his brooms. “What are you going to do with it?”

  Broom Man handed his supplies to Mr. Conway. “I’m going to take it apart and find out who’s been watching us.”

  “Tom!” Noah repeated.

  “Almost . . . ,” I said.

  Broom Man crouched in front of the drone and reached for it. I hit the throttle and the drone shot up three feet. Surprised, he fell back and landed on his butt. I poured on the speed and shot past Mr. Conway. The custodian’s hands were so full that he couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  “Get that thing!” Broom Man ordered.

  I raced the drone down the hall, toward the open door.

  “How did that door get open?” I heard Conway ask. The rear camera showed them running after the drone.

  We zipped through the open doorway and up the basement stairs.

  “Yes!” Noah shouted.

  Amy laughed. “Amazing!”

  Sam shushed her. “People are coming to class.”

  I flew the drone out of the stairwell and onto the first floor. Sam was right; the hallways were beginning to fill as students arrived for class.

  “Don’t bring it here,” Noah warned. “You’ll lead them right to us.”

  He was right. I checked the rear camera and spotted Mr. Conway and Broom Man as they spilled onto the first floor. I turned my attention back to the front view and had to slow to a stop.

  “Not now, Collin,” I growled.

  The Collybird was dead ahead. Its flashing lights made it look like a futuristic police car ready to pull me over for speeding.

  I flew our drone forward and the Collybird did the same. I moved ours up and his matched my movements. I dropped our drone and so did he. I didn’t think I could outmaneuver him the same way twice.

  “Okay, Collin,” I said. “I want you to meet some friends of mine.”

  I pulled the drone to a stop and then put it in reverse. The Collybird sped after our drone as it flew backward down the hall. Using the rear camera, I lowered the drone to fly through the crowd of students. Several of them jumped out of the way as the drone chase left the overhead airspace.

  I saw a gap in the crowd, and whipped the drone to the right. I tweaked the joysticks to rotate the drone at the same time. The crowd of kids turned into a blur as the drone spun around.

  “Woo-hoo!” Amy shouted. “I love this!”

  Sam shushed her again.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Noah.

  “Close your eyes,” I told him.

  I straightened out the drone and continued weaving through the crowd. The kids parted as I flew toward Mr. Conway and Broom Man. He still had his broom but he couldn’t swing it in a hallway full of kids. And now he had two drones to deal with.

  I broke left and zipped around the men. The rear camera showed Collin breaking right.

  “What kind of school is this?” asked Broom Man.

  I hit the stairwell and flew the drone up to the second floor. The Collybird was still close behind. Collin wasn’t giving up so easily this time.

  Once on the second floor, I flew the drone over the students and down the hallway. I had to find another way to ditch both the men and the Collybird. This time, I flew into the cafeteria. It wasn’t as crowded as during lunch, but there were still several students at tables eating breakfast. I thought about ducking the drone under one of the tables, or maybe hiding it behind the curtains of the stage at the end of the cafeteria. But I was out of time. Both the Collybird and Mr. Conway burst into the large room.

  The Collybird flew right at our drone. But Mr. Conway began closing the doors to the cafeteria. He was trying to trap the drone again.

  Noah nudged my shoulder. “It’s over, Tom.”

  “No way,” I said. “I bet I can fly out through the kitchen, or . . .”

  “No, Tom,” interrupted Amy. All the joy had left her voice.

  I didn’t understand why they were giving up so quickly. I pushed up one side of my headset. Amy had hers completely off. Sam and Noah were no longer looking at the tablet. Sam’s gaze shifted from me to someone past me.

  I winced. “Oh, man.”

  I released the controls and removed my visor, blinking to adjust to the fluorescent lights of algebra class. Everyone in our first period was watching me. Worse than that, Broom Man stood front and center.

  14

  The Substitution Solution

  “TOM SWIFT,” THE MAN SAID. “I should’ve guessed it was you.”

  “Wait, you know who I am?” I asked.

  “Of course. I work with your father often,” he replied. “And I can see quite a resemblance in you.”

  “If you’re such a good friend of his, then why are you trying to hack into his company?” asked Noah.

  Sam addressed the students. “It’s true. And we have video proof!”

  The man held up his hands. “Now wait a minute, kids, I think there’s been some confusion.”

  “We saw the code,” said Noah.

  The man nodded. “Well, yes, that was hacker code. And yes, what you saw was it trying to relentlessly look for flaws in the Swift Enterprises firewall. . . .”

  “I knew it!” said Sam.

  Broom Man reached into his back pocket. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Special Agent Fox, with the FBI.”

  Amy shut her eyes tight. “That’s it. I’m going to prison.”

  Mr. Conway entered the classroom, a little out of breath. “Okay, whose drone was that?”

  Noah and I raised our hands. Sam and Amy raised their hands too. “We helped,” Sam said.

  Mr. Conway pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the back of his neck. “Well, if you want it back, you can pick it up in Mr. Davenport’s office. Hope you have a good story.”

  Agent Fox grinned. “Oh, I bet they do,” he said. “They thought I was hacking into the computer system.”

  “What gave you that idea?” asked Mr. Conway.

  My friends and I glanced at each other, embarrassed.

  “Actually, we thought it was you, Mr. Conway,” Sam said. “We thought you might be Shadow Hawk.”

  The class burst into laughter.

  “Shadow who?” asked Mr. Conway.

  Sam told
him about the documentary we watched and how the photo of Shadow Hawk looked like a younger Mr. Conway. Surprisingly, everyone rumbled in agreement.

  Agent Fox nodded. “Yeah, okay, I can see that. A little.” Then he waved a dismissive hand. “But the FBI flipped Shadow Hawk years ago. He actually hacks for us now. Strictly white-hat stuff.”

  Amy raised her hand.

  Agent Fox nodded at her. “I’m not your teacher. You don’t have to raise your hand, Miss . . .”

  “Hsu,” Amy said. “Amy Hsu. I was just wondering why Mr. Conway’s computer was the only one that worked in the whole school.” She looked down at her lap and shrugged. “That’s also why we kind of suspected him.”

  “It still worked because it wasn’t turned on when the virus hit,” Mr. Conway replied. “And it’s not my computer. It’s just one tied to the servers.”

  “Let me guess, you saw all this from your drone?” asked the agent.

  “Yeah,” replied Noah. “It made perfect sense at the time.”

  “Then who is the hacker?” I asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” said the agent. “But we’re close to finding out. The main attack at the firewall began yesterday afternoon, after school.”

  Agent Fox’s story filled in most of the blanks. Most, but not all. What if we really had caught him trying to hack into the system and he was just covering? What if he tried to confiscate the video evidence from our drone? While everything was out in the open, I decided to call him on it.

  “Well, you were here after school,” I said. “Along with Mr. Conway and your other accomplice.”

  Agent Fox’s smile vanished. “Other accomplice?”

  “The one texting me, telling me to back off,” I replied.

  “Yeah,” Noah agreed. I can always count on him to have my back. “What about all that stuff?”

  Fox and Conway exchanged a glance. The agent shrugged. “I don’t know about any texts.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence, when a hand slowly raised in the middle of the crowd. It was Barry Jacobs. “Uh, that was me,” Barry admitted.

  “Barry?” asked Mr. Conway.

  Barry nodded at the man. “I overheard them talking about you, thinking you were that Shadow Hawk guy. I was trying to throw them off.”

  “Why?” I asked Barry.

  Barry shrugged. “Because . . . well, he’s my dad.”

  “Your dad?” I asked.

  Barry nodded. “He thought I would be embarrassed going to the same school where my dad was the custodian. So when he got the job here, he used a different name.”

  “My real name is Jacobs, just like Barry,” said Mr. Conway—or Mr. Jacobs, now. “Conway was just the name of one of my favorite movie characters.”

  “And it doesn’t embarrass me, Dad,” said Barry. “I keep telling you that.”

  Amy’s eyes lit. “That’s why we couldn’t find any trace of him online!”

  “You were cyberstalking me too?” asked Mr. Jacobs.

  Amy squeaked and put her head back down.

  Sam adjusted her glasses and leaned forward in her chair. “Okay, okay. But then there’s that weird . . . hacker-box thing you were listening to, and the Hackapalooza tickets.”

  Mr. Jacobs shook his head. “Boy, you kids were all up in my business. First of all, those tickets were supposed to be a surprise. Surprise, Barry.”

  “Sweet,” said Barry. The class laughed.

  Mr. Jacobs reached into his pocket. He pulled out the book-size machine. “And this is for listening to my tunes.”

  “What is that?” asked Jessica Mercer.

  “It’s an antique piece of technology you little geniuses are probably unfamiliar with,” he explained. “It’s called a . . . Walkman.”

  “It’s huge,” said Kent Jackson. “How many albums does it hold?”

  Mr. Jacobs pressed a button on the side and a small hatch opened. He pulled out a white cassette tape. “Just one at a time.” He replaced the cassette and slapped it shut. “Dexys Midnight Runners doesn’t sound rad without some tape hiss in the background.”

  You know, I was sitting with a room full of actual geniuses in one of the most advanced schools in the country, and I don’t think any of us understood a word he had just said.

  “Okay, that embarrasses me,” said Barry.

  The whole class laughed, and the bell rang for the beginning of class.

  As everyone settled into their seats, I shook my head in disbelief. The entire thing was ridiculous, actually. My friends were some of the smartest kids in the school and we had gotten each and every clue wrong. We made up this grand mystery and spied on what we thought was the perfect perpetrator. We were completely and utterly wrong. I had to admit, I felt a little discouraged by the whole thing.

  Except . . .

  We might have created our own perp but we didn’t create the crime. Someone really was trying to hack into Swift Enterprises. That part was real. And even though we hadn’t discovered who did it, neither had the FBI. Fox was still searching for the actual hacker.

  “I think I know who it is,” I muttered.

  “What?” asked Amy.

  “I think I know who the hacker is,” I said louder.

  The class grew quiet.

  Agent Fox leaned over. “What did you just say?”

  “You said that the hacker started the main assault on the servers after school yesterday, right?” I asked him.

  Fox nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Well, Ms. Talbot was working late yesterday too,” I said.

  “Talbot?” asked Agent Fox. He glanced at Mr. Jacobs. “Who’s that?”

  “She’s our substitute for this class,” I replied. “I saw her here yesterday afternoon.” I pointed to her desk. “And she was working on that computer. Not her laptop, like before. The school computer.”

  Mr. Jacobs went to the front of the class and tapped on the space bar. The school’s log-in page appeared. “Hey, this computer wasn’t off, it was in standby mode.”

  “Let me see that,” said Agent Fox. He sat at the desk and entered a username and password. He must have been given one for the investigation. After a brief delay, a familiar line of code began filling up a black screen.

  Agent Fox stood. “Where is Ms. Talbot now?”

  “She’s been two and a half minutes late for the past two days,” Amy reported. “Give or take thirty seconds. She should be showing up right about . . . now.”

  Ms. Talbot entered the classroom. “Sorry I’m late again. I just can’t seem to . . .” Her voice trailed off as she saw all the staring faces. Her eyes fell on Agent Fox. “What?”

  15

  The Custodial Confinement

  “I KNOW MANY OF YOU actually saw our hacker tracker in action a few days ago,” I said to the audience. “Some a little closer than others.” A ripple of laughter rolled through the cafeteria. “But none of you got to see it from the pilot’s perspective.”

  “I think you’ll get a better idea of the prototype’s unique maneuverability and audio recording capabilities,” Noah added. “Plus, it’s way cool.”

  I motioned to Amy in the back of the cafeteria. “So if we can kill the lights”—Amy flipped off the lights—“here is what we saw that day.”

  We left the stage as the large projection screen filled with the scene from the server room. We were playing back the entire video we recorded during the chase. It was our grand finale for our demonstration at this month’s invention convention.

  We joined Amy in the back just as the drone’s view shifted dramatically. Noah saw the shift and shut his eyes.

  “You do realize,” he said, “that if someone gets sick in here, we’re probably going to be the ones cleaning it up.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

  He was right. After Agent Fox had taken away Ms. Talbot in handcuffs, Noah, Amy, Sam, and I went straight to Mr. Davenport’s office and told him everything. And I mean everything—every sneak, ditch, and steal
(uh, borrow).

  Our principal was not happy at all. Even though our actions helped find the hacker in the end, we were still disruptive to the school. He gave us our drone back, but he sentenced us to one month’s community service . . . in the custodial department. That’s right, we are Mr. Jacobs’s assistants every day before and after school and after lunch. Now we all have the basement passcode memorized.

  Finding the hacker went a little further with my father, but not by much; he grounded me for two weeks. My dad was more upset that I didn’t tell him our suspicions in the first place. Even though our theory about Mr. Jacobs was disproved, my dad wanted me to know that I could always come to him about anything; that it won’t matter how crazy or outlandish my theories may seem. We’ll see how that goes. With the way my mind works, I have got some . . . unconventional ideas, to say the least.

  “This is my favorite part,” Amy said, pointing to the screen. It was the part where the drone flew out of the basement hallway and up the stairs.

  Noah groaned.

  “Why do you look?” I asked him. “I mean, really.”

  “Because it’s supercool,” he replied. “And I’m trying to toughen up.”

  “Keep trying,” I said.

  “I talked to Collin, and he’s going to teach me how to fly his drone,” Amy said. “And if I’m good enough, I want to get my own and help him patrol the halls.”

  “An Amybird?” Noah asked.

  Amy didn’t take the bait. “Yeah, isn’t it great?”

  I scanned the room. “Where’s Sam?” I asked. “Didn’t you say she was going to enter something after all?”

  Amy looked around. “That’s what she said. Maybe she changed her mind. Too much pressure.”

  “Did she tell you what it was?” I asked.

  Amy shook her head. “She said it was a surprise. She said she got the idea from our hacker tracker mission.”

  “Oh yeah?” asked Noah. “As long as it’s not a new dating app.”

  It turned out that Mr. Jenkins had really been sick. I heard from my dad that Ms. Talbot (or whatever her real name is) hacked a dating app so she could be matched with Mr. Jenkins. They went on a date and she slipped something into his food. I guess Agent Fox will have to add poisoning to her list of crimes.