“Dude, that’s classic!” Toad croaked.

The other boys all agreed that it was indeed “classic.”

“All right, dude,” Hooper said. “You go do your thing. We’ve got some serious pranks to pull before the end of the day, too.”

Wyatt opened up his backpack. Flinch saw it was stuffed tight with chocolate snack cakes. They were tubes of chocolate with cream filling called Ho Hos. Flinch had eaten a million of them in his day.

“What are those for?”

“We’re dumping them in the girl’s bathroom toilets where they will magically be transformed into floating number twos. It’s going to be hilarious when the girls run out of the bathroom looking like they’re going to barf!”

“FLINCH. We need you now!” Pufferfish shouted loud enough to rattle Flinch’s brain.

“Well, have fun,” Flinch said before he left. As he hurried from the cafeteria, he looked back at the boys. What a strange world middle school was. No one was exactly who they seemed. Even the troublemakers had layers.

Moments later, Flinch leaped into Locker 41. When he reached the floor of the Playground, his team was waiting for him—or rather, what was left of it. Nearly fifty of the scientists were now locked away in quarantine.

“They’re all infected?” Flinch asked.

Brand nodded. “And there may be more, but right now we can’t be certain. The results from the first round of testing were corrupted, so we’re going to start over. But that’s not our biggest concern right now. Suit up. The School Bus is ready.”

“Where are we going?” Flinch asked.

“Pack your sunglasses, shaky,” Jackson said. “We’re going to Hollywood.”

Ten minutes later, the School Bus was breaking the Earth’s gravitational pull and making a U-turn to California. Flinch watched the red glow of the superheated ship’s hull out the window while chewing on his fingernails. The last couple of missions had all been technically successful, but they were also disastrous, and it was mostly his fault. He just hoped that Agent Brand would finally see that he shouldn’t be leading the team.

Ms. Holiday unstrapped herself from her seat. “Time for your mission. Benjamin, can you help me out with this one?”

“Of course,” the little blue orb chirped. Spinning like a top in midair, it projected a 360-degree image along the walls of the rocket. Flinch saw a hulking giant with two heads, four arms, and four legs standing nearly ten feet tall. It was stampeding down Hollywood Boulevard, kicking cars aside and terrorizing everyone it passed. Then the video changed to a news reporter standing on the side of the very same street. She gestured toward the creature that was rapidly approaching from behind her, but much to Flinch’s surprise, she didn’t seem at all concerned.

“As you can see, today’s film shoot is tying up traffic from here to Wilshire, and I have to say, that is one amazing-looking robot,” the reporter said. “The magic of moviemaking is alive and well, folks.”

The video cut to a man sitting at a desk. “Carla, how long do they say the shoot will last? I’m sure that’s backing traffic up for miles.”

“At this moment there seems to be confusion as to who exactly is shooting the movie, but as soon as I get word, I’ll report back to you,” the reporter said.

“Why are we getting involved with moviemaking?” Gluestick asked.

“That’s not a movie. It’s the real thing. We’ve told the local press we’re a production company shooting a movie called The Monstrosity, and it’s important to keep them believing it as long as we can,” Agent Brand said. “People are already tense from the sudden crime wave. If they think a two-headed giant is terrorizing a major city it will lead to panic.”

Pufferfish slipped on her parachute. “So, what is it—a mutant? A robot?”

“No, it’s an actor,” Ms. Holiday said. “I’ve used facial recognition technology on one of the heads and I’ve identified him.”

“Facial recognition technology?” Flinch asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s a computer program. I tapped into a database filled with photos of people from all over the world. It searched every published photo, trying to match the eyes, bone structure, and nose of our giant. It took a bit longer because I was searching criminal records first. That’s the problem with this epidemic. The usual suspects aren’t the usual suspects; it’s regular people who are causing all the problems. Well, anyway, when I expanded the search I found him right away. His name is Justin Maines.”

“The Justin Maines?” Duncan cried.

“You know him?” Brand asked.

“Of course! He was on my favorite show of all time, Space Trek! He was one of the red shirts.”

“What’s a red shirt?” Braceface asked.

“The show was about a spaceship that investigated alien worlds. The people in charge wore yellow shirts, and the science and medical teams wore blue. But if the character had a red shirt on, he was a low-level member of the team, which meant there was a pretty good chance he was going to get killed or eaten or sucked into a time vortex and you’d never see him again.”

“Gluestick, sometimes your nerdiness is frightening,” Braceface said.

“But he’s right, Jackson,” Ms. Holiday said. “Mr. Maines was in fifty-seven episodes of that show, and he died in every single one. Since then, he’s made a career out of playing dead bodies on crime shows. They call him the ‘king of extras.’”

“Which makes a lot of sense when you take a good look at him—he’s got a couple extra arms and legs and an extra head,” Flinch said.

“Let me guess: He’s got a ray gun,” Pufferfish offered.

Ms. Holiday nodded. “We’re not sure how it works, but it appears to duplicate the molecular structure of anything it blasts, and then it rearranges the two copies into one solid form.”

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have two heads,” Flinch said. “I bet I could eat twice the candy!”

“Agent Flinch, you are not allowed to get hit with the ray on purpose,” Brand ordered.

Ms. Holiday helped Flinch put on his parachute, then passed him a sack of red ropes. He slurped down five like they were strands of spaghetti.

She helped Duncan next. “Wow! Justin Maines!” Duncan said, grinning. “When we stop his maniacal plot to take over the world, I’m totally going to ask for his autograph.”

“We’re over the drop site!” the lunch lady announced as he left the cockpit to help open the hatch.

“And remember, if you feel odd, if you get a fever or a sore throat, or feel like you’re smarter than everyone else, you’re probably infected,” Brand shouted over the wind that whipped into the cabin from outside. “You must let us know right away.”

Flinch eyed his teammates warily. Any one of them might be the next to succumb. He couldn’t help but feel suspicious, but he hated to think of his friends that way. They had been through so much together as spies and as buddies. He felt guilty preparing himself to fight them.

And what about the adults? He was very concerned about the lunch lady, who, he had to admit, was a rough-around-the-edges type already. As an ex-soldier, the lunch lady had seen a lot of combat in very dangerous places. There were rumors in the Playground that he was once a demolition expert, only he thought using explosives was cheating and just beat the building silly with his bare hands. Mr. Brand was no slouch, either. Despite his cane, everyone knew the director was the United States’ greatest secret agent. And then there was Ms. Holiday, who looked sweet and loving but was a trained fighter. He hoped he never had to find out what it was like to go head-to-head with any of them.

Flinch shoved three more strands of licorice into his mouth, and fearlessly jumped out of the plane into the open air. In no time he landed next to the team in the middle of Sunset Strip, one of downtown L.A.’s most popular areas. It was lined with shops and tattoo parlors, all night diners and parking garages, each with a flashy exterior that shouted “Look at me!” There weren’t many people on the street, which Flinch considered a major miracle. He hoped their luck would continue.