The mysterious unseen man pointed his weapon at the manager’s computer and pulled the trigger. At once the screen went berserk. Numbers and letters did a nervous dance across the monitor. The machine chirped and beeped and then Duncan could see the door to the vault slowly open.

“How did ye do that?” the manager cried.

“That would be telling. Squirrels!” the man shouted, and before Duncan could react, a sea of furry criminals raced into the room. He watched as they zipped into the vault with their sacks, filling them to the brim with cash, bonds, and jewelry, and then dragged their loot back into the main room with the rest.

“Pufferfish, whoever this is, it isn’t Heathcliff. It’s some old dude and he’s fired his weapon,” Duncan whispered. “It seems to be affecting the computer. He’s got the door of the vault open now.”

He didn’t get a response. All he could hear was an odd static sound. “Please advise. Pufferfish, are you there? Pufferfish, come in.” Still there was no answer. Duncan decided to move closer. Suddenly, he felt very ill. His stomach churned and his face felt hot. His hands and feet were itchy, and before he knew what had happened, his fingers and toes lost their grip on the ceiling. He fell to the floor, where he lay at the feet of a strange, overweight man in a black-and-green outfit.

“The boss warned me about you,” the man said nervously. Duncan had never met a villain with such lack of confidence. “I guess if you’re here then the others are on their way. Squirrels, get what you can. We have to go!”

“Who are you?” Duncan asked as he tried to stand. He could make out red eyebrows and a freckled face behind the mask, but not much else.

“Captain Just—you know what, it doesn’t matter who I am,” the man said.

He shooed his furry cohorts out the door and followed them, keeping his ray gun aimed at Duncan the whole time. Duncan wanted to glue the man to the wall behind him, but he couldn’t seem to activate the adhesives on his hands properly. The ability would work for a moment and then it would vanish just as quickly.

“Step into the vault, kid,” the man said.

Helpless, Duncan did as he was told. He had no idea what the weapon could do, but he was smart enough not to want to find out. Once Duncan was inside, the man leveled his weird ray gun at the boy’s chest. There was a flash of light and Gluestick felt as if he were no longer in control of his body. His feet and hands were producing the sticky film that allowed him to walk on walls at an alarming rate. It was literally pouring out of him like a garden hose, circling his feet and locking him to the floor. Within seconds he couldn’t move. He was like a mouse in a glue trap.

“Sorry, kid,” the man said, then fired his weapon at the vault itself. Duncan watched helplessly as the door closed tight, and then, with a sudden jerk, the vault plunged downward. The villain had triggered the security system. Duncan was stuck tight inside a vault that had just plummeted thirty feet below the ground.

“Do you like what you see, boss?” Albert’s voice said.

Simon was watching the action on a laptop computer in a tiny Internet café on Princes Street. The place was filled with losers writing stage plays and epic novels. Worse, the customers kept staring at him in his cloak and mask. Hadn’t they ever seen an evil mastermind before? He shrugged them off. He wouldn’t let them ruin his good time. Albert’s invention worked! With one zap, computers, machines, anything with an electronic intelligence, had been bent to his will. Best of all, it hypnotized the nanobytes inside Simon’s former friend, Duncan, disabling him.

“Most impressive,” Simon said, “but where are the . . . ” Just then he heard Flinch’s war cry over the monitor. “Look out, Albert!” he cried to the man on the screen. But it was too late. Simon watched as his hyperactive former teammate ran toward Albert at top speed, turning into a colorful blur before coming to a sudden stop. Flinch grabbed the man by one of his huge legs and lifted him off the ground like he was a marshmallow.

“I caught a bad guy! I caught a bad guy!” Flinch sang.

“Put me down,” Albert demanded, but when Flinch refused, he aimed his ray gun at the boy and fired. Flinch immediately dropped his prize and stared at his own hands in disbelief. Then, suddenly, the boy started running out of control until he slammed into a wall, face-first. He fell down, unconscious.

“What did you do to him?” a familiar voice yelled. Simon peered into the computer screen to see Matilda racing forward.

“You kids just stay back,” Albert stuttered. For a guy who wanted to be a superhero, he certainly didn’t have a lot of confidence. “Stay back!”

Matilda fired her inhalers and flew at him, kicking Albert in the head. The roly-poly man stumbled backward, struggling with his mask, which had slid down over his eyes. While he was disabled, Matilda went in for another attack, but Albert managed to fix his mask just in time to fire his weapon at her too. She fell to the floor with a painful thud.

Jackson and Ruby were next, and didn’t fare much better. As soon as they attacked, Albert shot them with the ray gun, as well.

When all four kids lay on the ground at Albert’s feet, Simon heard Ruby hiss, “So, are you another one of Heathcliff’s lackeys?”

Albert was confused. “I don’t know a Heathcliff. I work for Simon.”

“Oh, they’re the same guy. We also used to call him Choppers. He was one of us until he betrayed us and tried to destroy the world. Did he mention that to you?”

“I don’t need to know anything about him.”

“Well, you should know one thing, buddy. Your boss is a whiny crybaby filled with bitterness because he was never cool. It’s a fatal flaw and we will always beat him because of it. Unfortunately, you’re never going to get to tell him because you’re going to jail.”

“Whiny crybaby!” Simon cried. Everyone in the café stared at him but he didn’t care. “I will destroy you all! I will crush you into pulp and you will beg me for mercy but there will be none. Simon will have his revenge!”

“You ready for another root beer, kid?” the waitress asked.

Simon spun in his chair and gave her an angry look. “If you have any hope of a tip, I suggest you leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Fine,” the waitress grumbled and shuffled off to another customer. Simon turned back to the café’s computer and typed furiously. The “C” and backslash keys kept sticking, victims of too many spilled chai lattes. Still, what he had seen on the video had set his mind afire with inspiration. He would use Albert’s schematics to build a weapon big enough to knock out the world’s machines and put the human race in his control. And it looked as if there was nothing Gluestick, Wheezer, Braceface, Flinch, or Pufferfish could do about it. The other upside was that he would soon have enough money to move his base of operations to a proper secret lair where he wasn’t competing with birds, chipmunks, raccoons, and cats for space, and the rest of the evil villain community would stop laughing at him.

Now, with the money he was swiping from banks, he could build a new, glorious secret headquarters from which to devise evil plans. He typed furiously at the keyboard, making notes on his evil master bathroom, the evil solarium where he would devise evil plots, and the evil meeting room with the long, evil oak table where he would intimidate his evil underlings. But nothing made him smile like the evil mirrored room where he would taunt his enemies, causing them to believe there were thousands of him. He had seen that in a movie and it was supercool.

“The first thing I’m going to build in my new secret lair is an Internet café where I am the only customer,” he said loudly enough for the other customers to hear. “I will have robot waitresses who are not so incompetent and absolutely no one working on a blog.”