The Adventures of Kid Combat Volume One: A Secret Lost Read Online Free PDF Page B

floor,
posters covered the walls, and a sign that read “No Girls Allowed”
flanked the entrance. It was more a decoration than a rule.
    Kid Combat climbed up the tree and entered
the small house. A skinny and somewhat fragile ten-year-old boy
with jet black hair and glasses sat at his laptop. It was Connor
Jordan, also known as Gears. He was a typical computer geek. He was
always typing away on his computer. On weekends, while other boys
were playing baseball at the park, Gears was on the sidelines,
calculating statistics on the batters versus the pitchers.
    The bigger, meaner kids at school always
picked on Gears, but he didn’t care. He was too smart to worry
about bullies. He took his verbal blows and moved along without
much of a fight. He knew he would become something someday, and he
was part of something special with SOCKs.
    As Kid entered, Gears jumped up.
    “Ha! I won, finally! I beat the Russian in
chess!” Gears said as he danced around the tree house, pumping his
arms in the air in a victorious fashion. He took a few laps around
the tree house, then went back to his keyboard with a devilish grin
on his face.
    “I knew I would get him today. I just knew
it!”
    Kid stood there and smiled at Gears’s
delight. The poor kid had been playing chess with a Russian for
weeks and had lost every time. But it wasn’t about winning for
Gears. He was sharpening his skills and his mind. That was his real
goal. Then again, it never hurt to win.
    “More Internet chess, eh?” Kid inquired,
shaking his head. “Just let me know when you’re ready for me.”
    Kid was joking. The two friends vowed never
to play chess against each other. It made it more fun that way, not
knowing who was better and always trading jabs.
    “Whatever, Kyle,” Gears said
sarcastically.
    Not liking his response, Kid glared back at
Gears. This was official SOCKs business, and code names were
supposed to be used. Gears knew what he had done; he was just
having fun with his friend.
    “Oh, I’m sorry, Kid Combat,” Gears smirked
and quickly went back to his keyboard.
    “You done?” Kid said.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to lighten up, my
friend,” Gears said as he looked up from his screen.
    “The day I lighten up, my friend, is the day
we get caught,” Kid replied.
    Wedge and Timmy arrived next. They were
reconnaissance and telecommunications experts. It ran in their
blood. For generations, the men in their family were mechanical
engineers. Timmy followed closely in their footsteps. He could
always be found reading books on the subject or studying blueprints
of various devices. He also spent a good amount of this time taking
his toys apart, just to see how they were made. Wedge, on the other
hand, was better at getting himself into trouble than much of
anything else.
    Wedge, whose real name was William, was a
whopping two minutes older than Timmy, and he let his twin hear
about it all the time. They were fraternal twins, and although they
had most of the same physical attributes—height, weight, skin
color—Wedge had blond hair, while Timmy’s was nice and red. Wedge
was definitely the smart aleck of the two. Timmy was more quiet and
timid. The two were inseparable, and they shared that unique twin
bond. And even though Wedge would never admit it, he looked out for
his brother every second of the day, whether it was fending off
bullies or helping him with school work.
    The boys stood in the doorway. The smart
aleck was first to speak.
    “All right, boys, we can start now that I’m
here,” Wedge said with a half smile. “What are we getting ourselves
into now?”
    “Sit down, you two. I’ll go over the whole
thing,” Kid said.
    The boys sat around the makeshift table as
Kid went over what he and Samantha pieced together earlier that
day—how Jones was getting close to finding out that SOCKs existed,
how he and his men almost discovered Kid the night before, and how
Samantha believed Jones was going to expose SOCKs somehow.
    The