1 The Man in the Purple Mask The The three of us spread out across the ruined lab When we’d left the night before the space had been in perfect condition I’d even swept the floors But now early the next morning the huge room was a disaster Mechanical birds were lying shattered on the ground The insides of the self-driving car had been ripped out Wires spilled from the hood like electronic spaghetti Even our robotic pizza chef Harry was busted Cables hung down to his wheels Water was spreading across the floor from a small crack in the twenty-foot-deep submarine test tank Across the room Matt was leaning over a keyboard scanning a monitor Who could have done this he asked Ava was sitting on the floor carefully pulling a drone into her lap like it was a bird with a busted wing And why Before I could offer a guess a window exploded high above us Glass rained down on the self-driving car A black cube 1
bounced off the curved roof of the vehicle and plunked onto the floor Then it rolled For a second I thought it might be a grenade I imagined grabbing the explosive and heroically tossing it high into the air before anyone was hurt But when it stopped I realized it was just a camera Matt ran over to me and pointed up The lab was ten stories stories tall and the center of the huge space was wide open but a series of rooms extended out from the walls on platforms They stretched from the ground floor to the ceiling like spiral stairs and one of the rooms was puffing out clouds of vapor through a hole in a window A thin black rope was dangling all the way from the platform to the floor Is that the biosphere I asked Yes Matt whispered and someone’s in there Duh Ava replied Maybe it’s Hank A spark flashed inside the room A man cursed and shouted That’s not Hank Ava said Our friend Hank otherwise known as Dr Henry Witherspoon Witherspoon owns the lab He lets us work there too and takes care of us Well sort of anyway We hadn’t seen or heard from him in three weeks That was a really long time for him to be gone especially without sending us a single e-mail or even a quick text Honestly I would’ve settled for an emoji 2 Bill Nye and Gregory Mone
But Hank’s an unusual guy and he probably had a great explanation Oh and there’s no way he’d wreck his own lab Especially Especially not the room we were staring up at now The glass-walled glass-walled biosphere was one of his favorite spots About half the size of our apartment the space was a miniature ecosystem ecosystem sealed off from the outside world and the rest of the lab Nothing but light went in or out The air inside cycled through about twenty different plants and miniature trees and the water evaporated and condensed as it flowed along a miniature stream that circled the interior A hidden pump powered by sunlight kept the water moving Sure the Do Not Enter and Caution signs were painfully tempting but not one of us had ever been inside the room Not even me Honestly Except for that one time Which is kind of how I knew so much about the inside Matt grabbed my shirt just above the elbow Let’s get out of here he said still whispering Hank would’ve told us he was back This wasn’t quite true Hank showed up and disappeared without warning all the time But I didn’t challenge my brother I glanced at Ava She wasn’t moving Matt himself didn’t actually look ready to go But neither of them really 3 JACK and the GENIUSES
