The Hyena had begun to suspect that Dr. Felix Jigsaw was the fourth kind of boss. He rambled on and on to an imaginary colleague whom he was convinced was trying to sabotage his work. He ate nothing but bean sprouts, whole tea bags, and uncooked egg noodles, and he had a nasty habit of killing people when he didn’t get his way. If it hadn’t been for the guaranteed raise after ninety days, the Hyena would have quit.

But the killing and the unusual diet were only half of it. Every morning the Hyena and Dumb Vinci stood with the kidnapped scientists and watched Dr. Jigsaw do his daily workout routine. Jigsaw did one hundred one-armed push-ups. Fifty for his left arm and fifty for his right. When he was finished he would do one hundred lunges, one hundred shoulder presses, one hundred calf raises, and one hundred standing rows, fifty on each limb. It was a grueling workout, but what was even more painful was listening to Jigsaw’s lecture on the importance of symmetry, how essential it was to be equally strong on both sides of the body.

One morning after his workout, Dumb Vinci brought Dr. Jigsaw the tiny pencil-shaped device the Hyena had found in Dr. Lunich’s lab. Jigsaw studied it closely, turning it over and over, as if it were a beautiful flower.

“Dr. Lunich, tell me about your invention,” Jigsaw said. The Hyena was surprised by the man’s excitement. Jigsaw was nearly salivating.

Despite his kidnapping, Dr. Lunich had not lost his courage. He shook his head and turned up his nose.

“Dr. Lunich, that is bad manners. I invited you here to my lab. Don’t you want to be friends?”

“I was not invited. I was kidnapped just like all the others,” Lunich said, gesturing to the cowering men and women who stood behind him. “You should let us go before you get in more trouble.”

Dr. Jigsaw sighed and turned to the Hyena. “Mindy, dear, sometimes I wonder if I have what it takes to be a scientist. You see, I hate setbacks. I know it’s part of the job, and heaven knows I’ve had many. Some have been my fault—wrong turns I’ve made during my research, lack of imagination, exhaustion. But more often than not, my setbacks have been the result of working with lazy and small-minded people, bureaucrats, and pencil pushers. If I could only surround myself with passionate, open-minded thinkers, my plans would already have been completed. Take Iceland and Greenland—if I had the support of the scientific community, then they wouldn’t have slammed into each other so hard and perhaps—”

“You did that? You moved Greenland? People were killed!” Lunich said.

“My point exactly, and you have no one else to blame but yourself. All I’m asking for is some help with some equations and a little insight on your remarkable device. Don’t you want things to go better, Dr. Lunich?”

“You can forget it, Jigsaw!” Lunich shook his head. “I fear how you might use my invention.”

“Then let me explain,” the doctor said. “I have built a machine that can move continents from one place to the other with a blast of energy. Unfortunately, the machine is unable to move them precisely where I want them. Now, you’ve built an amazing machine, and I believe that if I can link my satellite to your tractor beam, I can literally tow everything where it’s supposed to go.”

“Supposed to go? I won’t help you. In fact, we’re all through with you.” Lunich gestured to the other scientists. “You’ll get no more help from us.”

Jigsaw stomped his feet like a child whose mother has just refused him cookies.

“You don’t have to be rude! If you don’t want to be friends, that’s fine with me!” Jigsaw shouted. He looked like he was about to storm off, but he hesitated for a moment. He stared at Lunich’s face as if he were cataloging his features.

“Doctor, has anyone ever told you that your left ear is slightly bigger than your right ear?”

Lunich scowled impatiently. “No, no one has ever told me that.”

“It’s really disconcerting. Now that I notice it, I find it difficult to see the rest of your face. It’s truly grotesque. I don’t know how you live with yourself.”

“You are clearly unwell,” Lunich said with disgust.

“I just can’t bear to look at it a second longer,” Jigsaw said, then pushed a button on his wristwatch. The floor beneath Dr. Lunich slid open and he plummeted downward. A flash of fire and a puff of smoke rose from below, along with a terrible scream.

The Hyena thought her eyes might pop out of her head.

“Well, friends,” Jigsaw said, waving the miniature tractor beam at the whimpering geniuses. “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Let’s break it open and see how it works.”

Jackson walked the hallways of Nathan Hale Elementary with a sense of wonder. The boring old cookie-cutter building he had never given a second thought to now seemed to be brimming with secrets. Every door might lead to a hidden room. Every face in the hall could belong to an international spy. He wondered if any of the other kids suspected anything. What would they think if they knew the world’s very existence was owed to these hallways? Yet at the same time, Jackson had serious reservations about joining Brand’s team. For one, he was worried he’d get killed, which was something he generally tried to avoid. And two, even with their souped-up technology, there were still nerds. All five of them were wheezing, whiny misfits.

Joining the group would mean giving up on ever being popular again. Even though his former friends had shunned him, Jackson still had hopes that they would give him another chance. If he accepted Brand’s invitation, he could flush all his dreams down the toilet.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that becoming a nerd, albeit a nerd who was also a secret agent, was not for him. No, he’d keep doing what he was doing and eventually he’d find his rightful place in the spotlight again. After all, once his old friends got a look at what he could do with his superbraces, he’d be the most popular kid in school. He reached into his pocket and felt the envelope that the spy had given him and knew what had to be done. He shoved the boys’ bathroom door open and stepped inside.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he said as he crunched the envelope into a ball and tossed it into the toilet bowl. He was leaning over to flush it down when he heard the bathroom door open. He turned to see who it was and saw a group of his former friends, led by Brett. They were laughing and slugging one another in the arm, a game they seemed to play all the time. Instinctively, Jackson smiled at them. After all, they had been best friends for years. But when Brett sneered at him, he knew he had made a mistake.

“Hey, Braceface,” Brett said. “How many toothbrushes do you go through in a day?”

The other boys exploded into obnoxious giggles.

Jackson felt his face flush. Before he could think, a nasty reply escaped his lips, “Hey Brett, you still using those big-boy diapers at bedtime?”

Brett’s face fell. His nightly bedwetting was a secret the two boys had shared since the second grade, when Jackson had spent the night at Brett’s house and they had gone hog-wild over pizza, candy, and root beer after root beer. Jackson had woken several times in the night to visit the bathroom. Brett had slept like a rock—a rock floating on a soggy mattress. The next morning, in front of Jackson, Brett’s mom had informed her son that from now on he would have to wear “pull-up pants,” which everyone knew was code for diapers. Horrified, Brett swore Jackson to secrecy.

Jackson felt bad about revealing the secret and began to make an earnest apology, when Brett grabbed him by the collar and forced him back inside the bathroom stall. Then, with the help of the other boys, he shoved Jackson headfirst into the toilet bowl. Someone flushed and the water swirled around Jackson’s ears. He was drowning, but there were too many hands holding him down. He kicked and punched and finally freed himself. Gagging and spitting, he managed to turn his head toward his attackers. They shrank back in terror. His braces! They had transformed into four metallic lobster claws, snapping and lunging at the bullies.