wanted to lead the way either I’m always the one who goes first Fine I said quietly I’ll go check it out Matt reached over to a small worktable and grabbed a hammer Ava shot him a look Really she mouthed My brother who had the muscles of an athlete but the fighting skills of a toddler deflated like a popped balloon Hammer or no hammer he wasn’t going to fight anyone None of us were He carefully replaced the tool and we crossed the lab floor as quietly as ninjas Now about this laboratory It’s a little odd Okay more than a little There’s a giant water tank for testing submarines submarines and robotic boats and suits that let you stay underwater without air tanks The glass-encased Mars room is a near-perfect near-perfect copy of the landscape on the Red Planet All kinds of vehicles and robots and enough computers to satisfy two classrooms full of kids are scattered around the place And that’s just the ground floor Each of the platforms that wind up toward the ceiling supports its own miniature lab The biosphere used to be on the fourth platform but Hank redesigned redesigned it and moved it up a few floors The first time Hank let us into his lab I had no idea how he got from one platform to the next The giant catapult catapult capable of launching department store mannequins fifty feet in the air suggested he had some exciting plans but 4 Bill Nye and Gregory Mone
he developed a much easier way up And the rope dangling from the biosphere’s platform suggested that the intruder hadn’t found it Ava grabbed the rope and gave it a gentle tug At least he didn’t use Betsy she said Betsy wasn’t a kid Or a pet My sister liked to name her inventions and Betsy was a motorized device about the size of a blender that let you fire a long cable up to rooftops or balconies and then whisked you right up like Batman Don’t tell her I said that though because she hates superheroes And look Betsy was amazing Totally Even if I had sprained my finger trying to use her the week before But this wasn’t the time for Betsy We needed to be quiet And safe I’d rather go the normal way I said Ava flicked a red rubber toggle switch hidden behind a painting of a lighthouse Two dozen metal steps popped out of the wall with a faint whoosh They weren’t connected to each other only to the wall and there was no railing either Hank had covered each one with a thin square of rubber after Matt had tripped and banged his knees on the metal edges about a dozen times Naturally for this reason I called the squares Matts Ava liked the joke My brother Not so much We hurried up the Matts and I stopped at the first 5 JACK and the GENIUSES
platform to listen Whoever was up there in the biosphere wasn’t trying very hard to be quiet Once or twice he shouted another curse but I couldn’t quite understand the swear I flicked the switch for the stairs to the next platform and we kept moving quietly and carefully winding clockwise around the interior walls as we ascended Each platform had its own focus One was all about growing and harvesting cells The second was a robotics workshop Then there was a clean room for experiments that couldn’t be contaminated with all the miniature bugs and microbes that crawl around the normal world a tiny greenhouse a 3-D printing shop and finally the biosphere We stopped on the platform below outside the 3-D printing room On the wall next to me was a painful reminder of one of the geniuses most successful pranks There was a hook and a hanger and a sign above them that read Invisibility Cloak I’m too ashamed to explain But the supposed cloak wasn’t there anyway so we’ll move on Something splashed in the room above If either my brother or my sister had suddenly decided this whole strategy strategy was a bad idea and that we should turn back and call for help I wouldn’t have protested But no one was ready to run so I reached out and flipped the switch We waited as the steps whooshed out of the walls then crept up The intruder muttered Then he began to hum a tune 6 Bill Nye and Gregory Mone
A pop song I turned back to my siblings and pointed to one of my ears hoping they might recognize it But this was pointless Neither of them listened to real music Matt only liked the symphonies of old dead guys and Ava once told me there was already too much noise in her head to crowd it with tunes Never mind I mouthed A sign on the foggy glass read Do Not Enter I pushed through the swinging door and held it open with my foot A man wearing a baseball cap and a thin purple ski mask that covered his face below the eyes stared back at me He was about Hank’s height and wearing shorts a T-shirt and a dark blue lab coat His eyes were gray his eyebrows thin and raised high in surprise His arms and legs were packed with wiry muscles and he was wearing an awesome awesome pair of black basketball high-tops If he hadn’t just broken into our lab I might have complimented him He froze We froze Then he yanked the lab coat up over his head crouched down with his knees to his chest and pulled it closed around his legs Behind me Ava made a noise Not a giggle exactly But close Why Because the intruder had just fallen for the same trick they’d used on me a few weeks before My siblings siblings are ridiculously smart Geniuses really Ava can build just about anything and Matt knows more science than 7 JACK and the GENIUSES
