“So you come down here and save the world every day?” Jessie asked Flinch.

Flinch nodded. “They usually give us weekends off.”

“Hey, what does this do?” Toad shouted. Flinch turned to see the boy hoisting Mr. Miniature’s shrink ray over his head.

“Don’t touch that!” Brand cried, but he was too late. Toad zapped an entire section of desks, turning them dollhouse-size.

“Cool!” the other boys said as they rushed to his side.

“My turn!” Jessie shouted.

“No! I found it! It’s my shrink ray. Get your own,” Toad said, wrestling the weapon away from his friend’s grabby hands.

Flinch stepped in and took the ray gun from the boys. “You have to keep your hands to yourselves, guys,” he said. “Some of this stuff is pretty dangerous.”

“Duh!” Hooper said. “That’s why it’s so cool.”

“Could everyone just stop for a moment so I can hear myself think?” Brand shouted. “Benjamin, I need a report.”

The blue orb floated out of the mission desk. After a few clicks the dome’s screen came to life with a hundred different news channels, all reporting on chaos at every corner of the Earth.

“No way!” Wyatt said. “We’ve got to hook up a video game to this thing!”

Flinch tried to tune the boys out and watch the screen.

“It can now be confirmed that the epidemic has spread into the hundreds of millions. France, China, and Belgium have all declared a state of emergency. Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and Ireland have established martial law. All planes worldwide have been grounded. Trains are not running. Nearly every harbor on the globe is closed.”

“Dudes! There’s a giant head over here,” Jessie shouted. He had slipped out of the main room while everyone was watching Benjamin’s report. Before Flinch could do anything, all four of the boys were racing down the hall and through the door that led to the holding cell. By the time he caught up with them, they were hooting and hollering as they gaped at Heathcliff’s disturbing form.

“What is that thing?”

“It’s like a hot-air balloon with a face.”

“We have to take pictures!”

“Hey! This room is off-limits,” Dr. Kim said. She and a handful of the remaining healthy scientists were working feverishly around the boy, clearly hoping for some kind of last-minute breakthrough. “Director Brand, Ms. Holiday, you have to get these kids out of here.”

“We’re doing our best,” Ms. Holiday said. She and Brand each had a kid by the arm, but they were hard to move.

“They’re like a bunch of excited puppies.”

“Guys, you’ve got to go,” Flinch said. “That head is what is causing all the problems. You could get sick—”

“Sick?” Hooper asked. “Is that what’s going on? Everyone is sick?”

“Yes, now let’s go,” Brand said.

“Is it bacterial or viral?” Hooper asked, causing everyone to look at him in amazement. “What? Just ’cause I’m a troublemaker, I have to be dumb? My dad’s a doctor.”

“It’s like a virus, but it’s man-made,” Dr. Kim said.

“Nanobots!” Wyatt said, which caused another ripple of surprise. “I watch a lot of sci-fi movies. So … those things are real?”

Dr. Kim explained that the team called their technology nanobytes, and that these particular nanobytes were corrupt and were being controlled by the transmitter buried inside of Heathcliff’s brain. There was no way to shut the transmitter off without killing Heathcliff, and in his death throes he might send killing pulses out to everyone infected.

“That’s wild, man,” Jessie said. “So the world is screwed. Are you sure you’ve got nothing in this place that can stop it?”

“We’re out of good ideas,” Ms. Holiday said. “Unless you’ve got something brilliant to offer.”

“You know what would be cool?” Toad said. “If it were me, I’d take that shrink ray and make myself real tiny and then inject myself into the big head’s bloodstream. Then I’d go in and turn off the transmitter.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Jessie said.

There was stunned silence in the room for a long time.

“Who are you kids?” Brand asked, then he turned to the scientists. “Could that work?”

Dr. Kim shrugged. “Mr. Miniature managed to shrink people, and they seemed perfectly well when we got them back to their normal sizes. In this case, we’d have to shrink a person down to the microscopic level, but—”

“If they went in his body, they would suffocate immediately,” another scientist argued.

“Not if we shrunk an oxygen tank with them,” Dr. Kim said. “If we equipped this person with the right tools, it’s entirely plausible that he could reach the transmitter and shut it off without harming Heathcliff or anyone else.”

“Make it happen,” Brand said. “It’s the best idea we have.”

“Which, may I point out, was my idea. I’m, like, a genius,” Toad said. Then he lifted his leg and farted.

The other boys roared with laughter.

“Classic,” Flinch said, surrendering to the giggles himself. This only made the boys laugh harder.

Immediately, the scientists went to work putting together the plan. They ran to the farthest reaches of the Playground, collecting tools and equipment. They went through all the gizmos, gadgets, and gear the team had at its disposal.

Eventually, everyone was ready, and the team assembled in Heathcliff’s holding cell. Next to his gigantic head was a large contraption made up of a huge tank filled with liquid, a series of tubes that led from the tank to a hypodermic needle, and Mr. Miniature’s shrink ray on a stand facing the tank. Next to this, several bizarre suits hung from a clothing rack. They were part scuba gear, part astronaut uniform, and they looked like something a Martian might wear in an alien invasion movie. Flinch marveled at the setup, even if he wasn’t quite sure how it all worked.

“We had to raid a few other experiments, but we’re happy to report that everything we needed was at hand,” Dr. Kim told the small remaining group. “Best of all, we have these containment suits designed by Dr. Charnoff, who, unfortunately, was infected yesterday. He built about a dozen prototypes—”

“Prototypes … as in untested?” Ms. Holiday asked. “Do we really want to send someone on a mission with untested equipment?”

Dr. Kim nodded. “I’m afraid they’re our best option. They were designed for space missions, and so they’re airtight, which will keep whoever goes in safe and sound. Plus, they generate a low-level deflection technology, a sort of force field, that may help keep away trouble.”

“What kind of trouble could there be in a body?” Flinch asked.

“Oh, I don’t know—maybe like a million different things,” Hooper said. “The acid inside the stomach could eat through the person’s skin within minutes, there are substances on the tongue that could dissolve you, or white blood cells that could attack you and rip you apart. Whoever goes in is going to face a lot of danger.”

“That’s exactly right,” Dr. Kim said, impressed. “But Dr. Charnoff’s suit also has a few gadgets that will help. There are harpoon guns in both the arms and legs. These can be fired into the walls of the circulatory system to keep our hero from being swept away by the bloodstream. Then there’s a laser inside the right glove that can be used to slice open passages from one organ to another. It was originally designed as a welding tool, but, shrunk down, it’ll be so small that it shouldn’t cause any real damage to Heathcliff.”

“So how’s the person going to get in?” Flinch asked as he studied the equipment.

“This is the really brilliant part. While wearing the containment suit, the agent will be placed in this tank of saline. The beam will shrink its contents, which will then fill up this hypodermic needle. Then I will inject it into Heathcliff, and the hunt for the transmitter will begin.”