The Monster Missions Read online

  I hurried back to where Garth still sat rubbing at his stinging eyes, and I thrust the shirt in his face. He flinched and glared at me.

  “If I wanted it, I wouldn’t have given it to you,” he snapped.

  “I figured it out,” I said. “Elmer’s ink, it’s like some kind of sea-monster repellent or something.”

  “And that saves us from the pirates how?” he said.

  “It doesn’t,” I admitted. “But we definitely need to tell Weaver about it.”

  Suddenly I felt something wet wrap around my ankle, and I turned to see that one of Elmer’s tentacles had snaked out of the top of his tank.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said, giving it a firm smack. He flinched, yanking the tentacle back inside the tank. Realizing I’d almost just gotten myself dunked, I quickly hurried over to confiscate the lock he’d so deftly picked.

  “Come on,” I said, dragging Garth to his feet. “We need to get back to Kate and Max before they think the pirates got us.”

  “Right,” Garth said, but he still paused on the way past Elmer’s tank to glare at the sulking octopus. “Repellent ink or no repellent ink,” he said, “you, sir, are a jerk.” Elmer just flipped a tentacle at him and slithered up the side of his tank. “Doesn’t it make you nervous to leave all these tanks unlocked?” Garth said, glancing around in concern.

  “No,” I said. “These guys are the least of our worries. Besides, if we end up failing, at least we give them a fighting chance against the pirates. Now grab your stuff and let’s go.” Garth shook his head but did what he was told, stooping to grab the buckets of locks. As Garth peeked his head out into the hallway, I couldn’t stop myself from blowing Elmer a quick kiss.

  We slipped back through the hidden door in Weaver’s classroom a few minutes later, and I almost screamed in surprise to find Max waiting for us, his arms crossed across his chest. His expression changed when he caught sight of the ink-covered and shirtless Garth.

  “You risked all our lives so Garth could get dunked by Elmer?” he said incredulously as I carefully locked the door behind myself.

  “No,” Garth said, setting down his heavy bucket, “that was just a perk.”

  “What’s going on?” Kate said, rubbing sleepily at her eyes.

  “I have an idea,” I said, holding up my heavy bucket of locks.

  “Is it a good idea?” Max said. “Because we can’t really afford any mediocre ideas at the moment.”

  “It’s a long shot,” I admitted.

  “We are currently under the control of a bunch of pirates,” Kate said, “and the sub’s only hope is a group of four kids. I’m going to say anything is a long shot.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “Here’s the first thing we do.”

  16

  The clock in my head ticking down the time since the Atlas sent out its distress signal was obnoxiously loud, and I rushed to explain my idea. The entire time I talked, I was laying out locks, the ones I’d made as well as the ones we’d managed to obtain from the large-specimen room. To Max and Kate’s credit, they listened to my entire rambling spiel without interrupting. When I’d finally run out of words, Max picked up the closest lock, which happened to be one of my first Elmer prototypes, and rotated it in his hands.

  “It might work,” he finally said, looking up. “I say we do it.”

  Kate let out a quiet whoop, and we sprung into action. After talking through our route—and a few contingency plans if things went south—it was time to move. As we queued up behind the door to the classroom, I glanced over at everyone and took a deep breath that did nothing to settle my tingling nerves. Man, I hoped this idea wasn’t going to get all of us captured. Everyone must have been thinking something similar, because Max turned to face us, bucket in hand.

  “What is it?” Kate said. “Are the pirates coming back?” Max shook his head, shifting a bit as he glanced over at me and Garth.

  “I think I owe you two an apology,” he finally said.

  “For what?” I said, surprised.

  “For rooting for you to fail,” Max said. “For telling you at every turn that you wouldn’t make it here. I was wrong. Even if this crazy plan of yours doesn’t work, you guys have more than earned your spot here.”

  “Wow,” I said, not sure what else to say.

  “Took you long enough,” Kate grumbled. “Now, if you’re done with your deathbed confession or whatever that was, can we go?”

  “Right,” Max said, blushing a bit. “Sorry, let’s go.” With that he slipped out the door, followed by Kate and Garth. Since I was keeper of the keys, I was the last one out, and I carefully relocked the door so that the pirates wouldn’t stumble upon Tank by accident.

  We made it down the first hallway without seeing a soul, and though I could hear voices and yelling coming from the direction of the hub, we’d already decided that we needed to head there last. We took a left and paused outside the door to the dive room. Voices were coming from inside, and Max quickly shut the door so I could slide one of the locks into place. We’d barely gone a few steps when a surprised yell came from inside the room, and something thumped uselessly against the locked door. There was no turning back now.

  Our biggest obstacle was being so severely outnumbered. That and the fact that we were unarmed. We couldn’t do much about the unarmed bit, but we could level the playing field and eliminate some of the pirates from the equation, at least until we could free some crew members and even out the odds. On the way to and from the specimen room with Garth, I’d taken careful note of which rooms had pirates inside. We moved down the hall, spreading out to attach locks to the crew’s bunk rooms, the bathrooms, the mess hall, and even a few large storage rooms just in case.

  We made it to the large-specimen room without incident and paused to regroup as planned. As I glanced around at my grinning friends, I began to think that we might actually have a chance. Suddenly there was a surprised shout, and we all whirled to see two men walk in.

  “What’s this? Kids?” said the one on the right. He had a similar pinched look to the pirates we’d seen earlier, except his face was more worn and wrinkled. He was also missing a rather large chunk of his nose, which gave him a lopsided appearance.

  “No one mentioned there were kids on board,” said the other, who had a matted red ponytail and squinty blue eyes. “The captain’s not going to like getting lied to. Somebody’s head’s gonna roll.”

  “We better bring ’em up front with the others,” said the first pirate. My friends and I instinctively took a few steps back toward the tanks.

  “Hold it right there!” boomed the second pirate as he stalked toward us.

  “Hold this!” Max yelled as he chucked one of my larger prototype locks at the man’s head. Max’s aim was good, and the man barely managed to duck as the lock missed his head by centimeters and hit the tank behind him. He stood up, his face a mask of fury, as Max grabbed another lock and pulled his arm back.

  “Nobody move!” bellowed the first pirate, and I looked over to see a sword being held to Garth’s neck. I froze as the man pointed his free hand at Max. “Drop it,” he said, and Max let the lock he’d been about to launch fall to the floor with a resounding clang.

  Garth took a giant step backward, and the pirate with the sword to his neck snarled and kept pace until he had Garth pinned against one of the tanks.

  “Don’t move again,” the pirate growled as he pressed the sword blade into the soft skin on Garth’s neck. Garth flicked his eyes upward. We all followed his gaze as three huge tentacles launched themselves over the edge of Elmer’s aquarium. The man stumbled backward in an attempt to get away, and dropped his sword as Elmer grabbed him and dumped him into his murky tank. Black ink shot out, and the pirate thrashed to the surface, screaming as he clawed at his eyes. Garth picked up the fallen sword and pointed it at the other pirate. This probably wouldn’t have gone well, seeing as Garth had never held a sword in his life, except that Kate chose that moment to give
the distracted pirate a quick kick from behind, which sent him sprawling just long enough for Max to disarm him.

  The aquarium Weaver had been cleaning the morning before was still empty, and with nowhere else to put the pirates, we crammed them inside. They didn’t go easily—even with one of them blinded, they put up a fight that earned Garth a black eye and Kate a bloody nose. I used Weaver’s keys to bolt the top of the aquarium lid with one of the locks we’d collected, smiling at the two pathetic figures inside.

  “You know,” Garth said as he scooped up the locks that had tumbled from his bucket, “if you had told me ten minutes ago that I’d owe my life to Elmer, I wouldn’t have believed you. Thanks, man,” he said, turning to give Elmer’s tank a salute.

  “We are almost out of locks,” Max said, hopping down from where he’d been triple-checking the lock on the pirates’ tank.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “The locking-pirates-in portion of this whole thing is over. We need to start turning the tables, or the ones we locked in are going to bust their way out.”

  “It sounds like the rest of them are in the hub,” Kate said, and she took stock of the weapons we’d managed to get our hands on: two swords, three knives—one so rusty it seemed almost unusable—and a thin rope the first pirate had had looped around his waist like a belt.

  Max turned to the two pirates in the tank and tapped on the glass. “Hey, ugly and uglier,” he called. “How many of you are aboard the Britannica?” The pirates just yelled back at him, using words that I’d never heard before but that didn’t sound at all complimentary.

  “I’m surprised no one else came back here to see what those two were yelling about,” Kate said. “That whole encounter wasn’t exactly subtle.”

  “You spoke way too soon,” Garth said, peering down the hall. “Get ready.”

  The words had barely left his mouth before five more pirates burst through the door. It took them a second to take in the situation—a group of kids they’d never seen before, and two of their comrades locked inside a giant aquarium. As though we’d planned it, we backed up toward Elmer’s tank, and the cranky old octopus did not disappoint. The pirates rushed toward us, and within a moment three of them were airborne and headed toward Elmer’s tank. Between the four of us, and a very lucky slip and fall by one of the pirates right before he would have put a pretty nasty gash in Kate’s leg, we managed to disarm the two pirates Elmer hadn’t managed to blind in his inky tank.

  There was a lot to be said for the element of surprise and a trigger-happy giant octopus. The pirates were ink-blind and utterly confused by the time we had them disarmed. Unfortunately, we’d run out of tanks to put them in. Instead we tied them up with the rope we’d confiscated as well as some of the wire we used to string fish. Garth had the bright idea of hooking them to the front of Elmer’s tank.

  “If they move, dunk them,” he instructed the gigantic octopus.

  “You know he can’t understand you, right?” Max muttered as Garth rejoined our group.

  “You know that, and I know that,” Garth said quietly. “But those pirates don’t know that.”

  Max snorted and shook his head. “Time to move,” he said. Everyone headed out, but I hesitated in the doorway, looking back at the tied-up pirates, worried they’d get loose. Elmer chose that moment to lunge at the front of his tank, and all five of them screamed. I smiled and shook my head as I hurried after my friends. It was time to take back the Britannica.

  17

  We could hear the hub before we saw it. The rough chorus of voices with the occasional sound of something shattering made it clear that the pirates were making themselves at home. I glanced nervously at my friends. So far my idea to use the locks had worked out far better than I ever could have hoped, but despite our efforts, we were about to be outnumbered. The second I thought about hesitating, though, I remembered the emergency call from the Atlas, and I felt my resolve harden into an icy rock inside my chest. These pirates were standing between me and helping my family, and they were going to live to regret it.

  As we got closer, we slowed our pace, creeping along the hall until the only thing separating us from the hub was the spiral staircase that led up to the entrance hatch I’d come down on my first day.

  “Let me ask you again,” said a male voice so low-pitched it reminded me of thunder. “What is the pass code to the controls of this submarine? Keep it a secret much longer and you’re going to lose a crew member. I might even let you pick which one.” I felt my stomach give a sickening roll. Max held a finger to his lips, and we peered around the corner.

  I saw the situation in a split second. Captain Reese was standing in front of the control panel, a pirate’s sword pressed to her neck, the pirate in question looming over her. While the rest of the crew looked gaunt, he appeared well-fed and powerful, and I knew instantly that he was the captain of the pirate submarine. Four of the Britannica’s crew members, including Wilson, were untied, sitting hunched in front of their control panels while armed pirates loomed over them. From Wilson’s sour face and crossed arms, I could tell they’d been at this a while. I scanned the room for the rest of the crew and spotted Hector, Weaver, the three engineers who had patched up the Britannica, Megan, Ryan, and the rest of the teenage crew members tied up and gagged against the far wall. I jerked my head back, hauling the others with me. I held my finger to my lips and motioned for them to follow me. Max looked like he wanted to argue, but after standing for a second with his fists balled, he gave a sharp nod and followed me back down the hall. A few of the doors we passed rattled as the pirates trapped inside tried to get out. Thankfully, their shouts were muffled behind the thick metal doors.

  I took a right and stood aside so everyone could pile into Weaver’s classroom. I shut the door behind Garth and quickly locked it, turning to my friends.

  “We are right back where we started,” Garth said. “What gives?”

  “Did you see how outnumbered we were?” I said.

  “So?” Max said. “We’re out of locks, and if we wait too long, the pirates we do have locked up are going to find a way to get out.”

  “We need to free Hector and Weaver and all the rest of the crew who are tied up,” I said. Max opened his mouth to say something, and I held up a finger to stop him. He shut his mouth. “To do that, we need a distraction,” I went on. “We need someone to sneak around the perimeter of the hub and get them untied while the pirates aren’t paying attention.”

  “Too bad we can’t snag Elmer and haul him into the hub,” Garth said. “He is one heck of a distraction.”

  I smiled at Garth. “Great minds think alike,” I said.

  “You can’t be serious,” Kate said. “Elmer is huge! He’d chuck us through a window before he’d let us squeeze him down the hallway and into the hub. I was here when they tried to release him the last time—it took five adult crew members and three tranquilizers, and it was still a fiasco.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Elmer,” I said. “I was thinking about these guys.” I motioned around us to the tanks that were humming and gurgling with their strange occupants.

  “Huh,” Max said, spinning slowly in place. “That just might work. Which ones were you thinking?” The next five minutes were spent arguing the merits of launching the loogie at someone and hoping it managed to latch on versus releasing the poisonous double-headed beaked sea snake and hoping it didn’t accidentally bite one of our own crew members. We eventually decided to hedge our bets and grabbed four of Weaver’s more interesting pets.

  Unfortunately, executing this part of my plan proved trickier than I’d anticipated, and at one point I found myself wondering if wrestling Elmer down the hall would have been easier.

  The hidden-fanged loogie proved particularly troublesome. Garth had the misfortune of missing it with his first net swipe and paid the price. Thankfully, Kate remembered that the loogie hated bright lights, and she was able to get it to release Garth using a small flashlight she had judiciously sl
ipped into her pocket. In the end we each had a bucket with a different specimen inside. Garth had chosen a stinging nettlefish, Kate had a baby dogfish, Max had the poisonous two-headed beaked sea snake, and I ended up with the loogie.

  Buckets in hand, we jogged back down the hall toward the hub. When we got back to the staircase we’d hidden behind before, we stopped, and I carefully handed Garth the bucket containing the loogie. Kate handed her bucket to Max, and she and I slipped quickly past the entrance to the hub so we were standing on the opposite side of the doorway, pressing our backs tight to the wall so we wouldn’t be seen. Max and Garth waited until we were in position, and then, with a curt nod, Max donned the metal armpit-length glove Weaver always wore when handling specimens, screwed up his face, and plucked the poisonous beaked sea snake from its bucket. A beaked sea snake was deadly with just one head, and Max flinched backward as both heads snapped at his face. He crouched down and carefully pointed the snake toward the hub and let go.

  We stood frozen, waiting as the snake slithered inside. I said a silent prayer that the pirates would notice it and that the Britannica’s crew would stay out of its way. A second later someone screamed, and Kate and I made our move. I dashed around the corner at a full sprint, Kate hot on my heels, as Garth and Max burst into the room shouting and launching the contents of the last three buckets at pirates. I had no idea if the loogie had managed to grab on to someone, or if it just looked like Max had hurled some snot into the room, because my focus was on the small cluster of crew members we were attempting to free.

  I skidded to a stop and crouched down beside Hector. Kate did the same with Weaver, and we began sawing at the ropes binding their arms behind their backs. Meanwhile, complete chaos had broken loose in the hub, but I didn’t dare look up to see what was happening. If Max and Garth were captured, and they undoubtedly would be, our only hope was to have enough of the crew untied to turn the tide. The small metal lab scalpels we’d tucked into our pockets from Weaver’s dissection cabinet were sharp but tiny, and it took longer to get through the ropes than I’d hoped, but eventually Hector’s hands sprang free, and I handed him the scalpel, grabbed a second one from my belt, and started working on Megan’s ropes.