Crisis Zero Read Online Free PDF Page B

Chum Bucket meant.
    I grabbed the object and pulled it from the drum. It was a freezer bag dripping with red goop. Inside was a computer hard drive.
    This had to be the one from my locker! The drive Agent Chum Bucket got caught with must have been a decoy. I had to admit it was pretty ingenious that the Agency had such a contingency plan ready to go. Although it was also a little annoying they hadn’t told me about Chum Bucket’s assignment. So much could have gone wrong.
    So much still could.
    If the stuff he’d been caught with weren’t the real files and hard drive, it meant the NSB was going to figure that out eventually. Which meant that I needed to get the real one out of the school as soon as possible. I couldn’t even waste time cleaning the condiments off the freezer bag.
    I made a face as I shoved the secret sauce–covered freezer bag into my backpack. It was probably going to smell like McDonald’s for the rest of its existence. But that didn’t matter—getting this stuff to Director Isadoris was way more important than how my backpack smelled.
    Before I left, I checked the other tubs of secret sauce. I didn’t find more material from Gomez’s office, but I did find several sealed packages of spy gadgets that Chum Bucket must have kept hidden there for emergencies. I recognized some of the equipment, but other items looked completely new. I stuffed all of it into my bag as well, then zipped it up, pulled off the plastic gloves, and exited the pantry faced with a significant decision. I had two options:
    Take a right: exit the school, risking expulsion, and head directly toward Agency HQ with the hard drive.
    Take a left: head back to seventh-period class, riskinganother run-in with Agent Loften and his NSB goons and the reconfiscation of the hard drive, as well as the task of explaining to Mr. Kittson why I was covered in greasy red gunk.
    I turned right, pushed open the door underneath the glowing green exit sign, and was out of the building about fifteen minutes before the end of seventh period.

CHAPTER 9
A TICKER TAPE PARADE IN GHOSTOWN
    T O AN OUTSIDE OBSERVER, I WOULD HAVE LOOKED LIKE A CRAZY person. Just some kid, half covered in gloopy condiments, jumping around in a snowbank without a coat like a lunatic. But what a passerby wouldn’t have known, of course, was that there were secret cameras hidden inside the swallows’ nests adjacent to the small snowbank I was frolicking in.
    Hidden cameras planted there by a government agency so secret that its very name was classified and unknown by its own employees.
    But I knew the cameras were there and so I jumped up and down in front of the swallows’ nests, waving my arms like a madman. All I wanted was to get the evidence in my bag down to Agency personnel before the school bell rang and the odds of getting caught with the stolen hard drive would increase exponentially. After all, everybody, NSB agent or otherwise, would take a second and third look at a kid dripping with greasy barbecue sauce. Besides, it really was freezing without a coat—I was right in the middle of an infamous North Dakota winter, after all.
    Luckily, I didn’t have to wait very long before I heard the maintenance shed door open behind me.
    Agent Smiley poked her head out and motioned for me to join her. I ran inside, where the secret elevator was already waiting. We stepped onto the platform.
    â€œYou have the hard drive?” she asked before pressing any buttons.
    â€œYep.”
    Then we were shooting down into the earth, leaving our stomachs up at the surface. During the ride down into Agency headquarters, Agent Smiley held a hand over her normally unflinching face and tried to hide her crinkled nose.
    â€œSorry,” I said, looking down at the secret sauce stains on my pants and shirt. “Things got a bit, uh, messy.”
    She didn’t say anything back. Then we hit the bottom and the elevator doors opened.