My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord (14 page)

We sprang into action. Lara collected the gym bag containing her Dark Flutter costume from where she'd stowed it behind the flowers. Serge's fingers were a blur as he expertly tied his bow tie. The three of us made our way quickly to the men's locker room.

We hurried past rows of polished wooden lockers to the far wall. Ranks of golf shoes poked from beneath low benches like the feet of an otherwise invisible army. There, at the end of the last bench, stood a pair of brown suede loafers. Unlike the rest, these shoes were filled. By Christopher Talbot.

Screwdriver in one hand, soldering iron in the other, eyes hidden behind protective goggles, he hunched over the guts of a video game console. Curling cables sprung from connectors, hooking up the dismantled console to various external devices. Among the random bits of apparatus, I recognized a keyboard and a car battery and, at the heart of the tangle of wires and circuit boards, the alien game-disc-that-was-really-a-teleporter. The whole contraption sat on what looked suspiciously like a dessert cart.

The soldering iron hissed, its white flame reflecting in the dark lenses of the goggles. Christopher Talbot snapped the flame off.

“There. Finished!” He pushed the goggles onto his forehead. “Impressive, hmm?” A satisfied smile played across his lips.

Lara voiced what I was thinking.

“There's no way that thing's teleporting anyone. It's just a bundle of wires and stuff.”

His smile evaporated. “How typical of your generation. Just because something doesn't come in a fancy box with a fruit-based logo doesn't mean it's not cutting-edge technology.” He wiped his hands with a cloth. “It'll work. Trust me.”

I edged closer for a better look. Nestled among the seemingly random collection of bits and bobs was some kind of mysterious dome-shaped device in a small dish. I was about to poke it when Christopher Talbot flung out an arm.

“Don't touch that,” he cried. “It's my bomb.”

I froze in horror. We hadn't discussed anything about a bomb.

Serge studied the device with an expression of professional interest. “Ah,
oui
,” he said, nodding. “I believe what we have here is a chocolate-covered ice-cream
bombe
.” Serge was an expert on all things confectionery and patisserie.

Christopher Talbot's silence confirmed my initial suspicion. “Did you steal a dessert cart?” I said.

“No,” he said flatly. “Pass me that spoon.” Serge was closest. He handed it over; then Christopher Talbot broke the chocolate shell with a brisk rap and took a bite. “One minor technical hitch,” he said through a mouthful of pilfered dessert. “I made a slight error in my power calculations.” He tapped the car battery with the spoon. “This thing's not going to give us enough electrical juice to power the teleporter.”

“How much more do we need?” I asked, looking around the locker room. “There must be an electrical socket in here.”

Christopher Talbot shook his head. “It's going to take significantly more than that, I'm afraid. I'll have to use my superpower.”

His electrical energy power was our most potent weapon. I'd been counting on him arriving on board the alien mother ship with a full charge. If he used it for the teleporter, it would be a whole hour before he'd be able to summon another blast. But there was no alternative. We had to get aboard that ship.

“Mmm, delicious.” His spoon rang in the now-empty dish. He looked around at us. “Oh, my profound apologies. Did you want some?”

Lara squared up to him. “I want it on record,” she said. “I don't like you. And what's more, I don't trust you.” They were toe-to-toe. “Make one wrong move and you should know that I have a squirrel with your name on it.”

“Uh, I think it's time to suit up,” I said, pushing Lara's gym bag in between them to prevent further confrontation. She snatched it from me and went off to change.

“Very tense, isn't she?” said Christopher Talbot, but not before she was out of earshot.

“Hey, you guys,” said a voice. “I've been looking everywhere for you.”

Josh Khan stood at one end of the locker room.

“What are you doing in here?” he said, making his way toward us. “Did you hear that weird message? Voice sounded kind of like the one in
Puny Earthlings!
, don't you think?” As he drew closer he noticed Christopher Talbot, and then his eye fell on the dessert cart teleporter. “What is
that
thing?”

This was disastrous. How on earth was I going to explain away all of this? But before I could say anything, there was a swish of a cape and from out of the gloom strode Lara, wearing her superhero costume.

“Dark Flutter?” gasped Josh. “Is it really you?”

“What's he doing—” Lara caught herself. “Hi. Yes.” She raised a palm in greeting. “It is I, Dark Flutter. How are you?” She cleared her throat. “I mean, who are you?”

“I'm Josh. It's short for Joshpal,” he said, clasping one of her gloved hands and pumping it furiously. “I can't believe it's you. Everyone prefers Star Guy,” he said, and Lara scowled. “But you're my favorite.”

“I am?” said Lara.

“Of course. Animal powers are the coolest.”

“Yes, they are, aren't they?” she said, pleased.

“Uh, Dark Flutter,” I said, “we're running out of time. The mission clock is ticking. Let's go.”

Josh stepped in front of me and began to prod a finger at my chest. “Hey, you can't order her around. She's Dark Flutter.” He sneered. “You're nothing. You're just—”

“Commander Luke Parker,” interrupted Lara coolly. “Leader of S.C.A.R.F., a secret superhero team on a do-or-die mission to save Earth from alien invaders.”

Josh's lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Ready when you are, Commander,” said Lara, snapping a salute.

“Very good,” I said, thrilled at her timely words, and desperately trying to keep a lid on my delight at the effect they were having on Josh. “Initiate teleportation procedure, Christopher Talbot.”

“Aye-aye,
Commander
,” he replied. Electrical energy poured from his fingertips into the device. By the crackling light I watched Josh Khan's stunned expression.

“Dark Flutter,” I said. “Do you have
the package
?”

She patted a small pouch hanging from her belt. “The Wraith is aboard, Commander.”

With a whine, a green cone of light rose from the game disc, just as it had in Crystal Comics.

“I told you it would work,” crowed Christopher Talbot. Suddenly, he grimaced and staggered into the bench. His superpower faltered. “Quickly, I don't know how long I can hold it open.”

“OK, S.C.A.R.F.,” I said, addressing the others, “we're going in.”

Time was of the essence, but I couldn't resist taking one last shot. I turned to the slack-jawed Josh. “Y'know, I'd love to have you on the team, Josh, but I'm afraid Steve took the last spot.” I gave him a sympathetic clap on the arm.

Serge waved to catch his attention. “Ah, Josh Khan, there is one thing I must tell you also,” he said. “I do not have a cat.”

Josh said nothing, just sat down heavily on the bench. And the look on his face? Now
that
was funny.

Grinning to myself, I followed the others and stepped into the teleporter.

“Look out!” yelled Lara.

I had barely stepped from the teleporter at the other end when she grabbed my arm. A quick glance around at my surroundings confirmed that we were aboard the mother ship, but not where I expected to be. Instead of the gym, we had beamed onto another deck entirely. Rows of exhaust fans whirred as enormous ovens blasted hot air. Gigantic fridge-freezers ringed the room like the sculptures of a frost-free Stonehenge. The air was filled with the smell of school lunches. It was the kitchen.

Lara, Serge, and I were hemmed in by sue-dunham lunch ladies, each brandishing a different kitchen utensil.

“Careful,” said Serge. “She's got a ladle.”

The lead lunch lady swaggered before us, wielding her ladle. Beside her another rattled a set of measuring spoons. A sieve, a whisk, and a clicking pair of tongs completed the set.

Lara reached for a large bowl on the counter and threw its contents across the floor. Undercooked Brussels sprouts rolled like marbles in front of the advancing aliens. The sue-dunham lunch ladies went flying.

“Quickly!” shouted Lara, sprinting for the door.

My shoes scrabbled for grip on the linoleum as I hurried after her. “Great,” I muttered. “Pinchy
and
slippery.” I wondered how James Bond did it, carrying out all those missions in formal shoes.

From close behind us came more angry whistles as the aliens gave chase. We sped past long tables stacked with impossibly tall towers of cardboard boxes. There had to be thousands of them.

“Must be packed lunches for the invasion force,” I said, panting.

A volley of apples thudded against the door frame as we hurtled out of the kitchen. We ducked down a corridor and doubled back, giving our pursuers the slip. Finding the relative safety of a storeroom, we paused to catch our breath and regroup. Only then did it hit me that we were a man down. “Where's Christopher Talbot?”

“Perhaps he was teleported somewhere else on the ship,” said Serge.

Lara gave a snort. “I bet he never even got into the teleporter. He's not exactly the bravest, is he? Do you really believe a man like that would willingly hurl himself into outer space to take on a bunch of evil aliens? I would say that he chickened out, but that would be an insult to some very daring poultry I know.” She unbuttoned the small pouch hanging from her belt. The Wraith wriggled out and sat happily in her outstretched palm. “At least we haven't lost our secret weapon,” she said, tickling him under the chin and making goo-goo noises. “Have we, Wraithy?”

I forced a smile. In truth I wasn't ecstatic about having to rely on any secret weapon that enjoyed being tickled.

Could she be right? Had Christopher Talbot abandoned us? I'd watched him face down an alien commando on Main Street, so I knew he could be brave, but it was true: most of the time his main tactic was to run away. To my surprise I wasn't angry. I felt sad for him. Once he'd dreamed of being a superhero, but now it seemed he didn't even have the courage to try.

Something else was bothering me. “The aliens all look like Miss Dunham because they probed my mind and picked the form that would scare
me
the most.” Puzzled, I turned to Lara and Serge. “But why do they
still
look like her now that you're here?”

“She's pretty scary,” confessed Lara.

“Ah, yes,” said Serge. “I have faced nothing more terrifying in my life than dodgeball with Miss Dunham.”

At the door the Wraith wrinkled his pimply pink snout and squeaked.

“He says he detects no worm-sign,” said Lara. “I think that means the coast is clear.” She popped the mole back in his pouch, and we crept into the corridor. I quickly plotted a route to the ICT department situated on the top deck of the ship.

As we made our way through the mother ship, I reviewed our dire situation. My original plan had fallen to pieces as soon as we boarded without our most powerful team member. We were stretched thinner than a thin-crust pizza.

“We still have to hit the ICT classroom first,” I said. “Once the Wraith does his stuff, the sue-dunham will have plenty to keep them busy. While they're dealing with the chaos, we'll rescue Cara.”

I wished I felt as confident as I sounded. I was learning the hard way that plotting the downfall of a race of alien invaders from the comfort of your tree house didn't prepare you for the reality of creeping through a spooky spaceship surrounded by hostile life-forms.

“This way,” I said, taking the lead. The walls of the corridor were lined with unsettling symbols. I didn't have to know the sue-dunham's language to understand from the vivid diagrams of flaming alien skulls, electrified bodies, and melting eyeballs that these were warning symbols. The science corridor lay before us.

“I don't like it,” said Lara. “Where are the sentries? Why aren't alarms going off? They know we're on board.”

There was a swishing sound behind us as a sue-dunham scientist in a hazardous-materials tracksuit plodded out of one of the labs. Before I knew what was happening, Lara had pushed Serge and me through the door of another classroom.

“That was close,” she breathed, when we were safely on the other side.

I looked around. We were inside an alien laboratory. It was a lot like the labs at school, with a fume hood, rows of workbenches scarred by experimental mishaps, and the whiff of rotten eggs. But there were a few key differences. In our science lab hung a globe of the earth. The aliens' ceiling was strung with dozens of different planets—I guessed they were worlds the sue-dunham had conquered. And where our lab was brightly lit to avoid accidents, this one was as dim as a movie theater. It was also empty of scientists and silent except for the whir of an exhaust system and a low gurgling from a row of six glimmering tubes that stretched from floor to ceiling.

At one end of the lab were squares of blue light, a bank of touch screens that floated like lightning clouds. What was it about alien screens that they always hovered in midair? Maybe aliens were like my dad and not very good at screwing brackets into walls. We'd lost three TVs that way.

Lara crossed to the closest of the glowing tubes. Her face shone in its eerie light. “What do you think's inside?”

It was hard to see through the thick fluid swirling like creamy coffee inside the tube, but I was pretty confident I knew. “Almost certainly a giant blue brain,” I said. “That's the sort of thing you're likely to find in a weird alien stasis pod.”

“Or a tentacled horror,” added Serge.

Lara took a step closer. “I don't think it's either of those things. In fact, it looks kind of familiar.” She placed a palm against the outside of the tube.

We had to make it to the ICT classroom before prime time—in less than an hour and a half. I was about to tell Lara it was time to leave when I noticed a cell phone on one of the workbenches. And not an alien one. I picked it up and thumbed the home button. The phone sprang to life to reveal a grid of icons against a background image of a smiling girl and boy. It was Cara and Matthias.

“Hey, I've found your sister's phone,” I said, turning to Lara, who was still standing next to the liquid-filled tube. “I wonder what it's doing in here.”

As I puzzled over the question, there was a movement in the tube, like the flick of a fish tail. Then from out of the dense swirl shot a hand. It thumped against the inside of the tube. A moment later a face emerged from the gloop, pressing itself to the glass.

With a gasp, Lara stumbled backward. “It's Cara! We have to get her out.”

“Wait!” I shouted. “Look.”

Something was moving in each of the other tubes. As we watched, the liquid drained off with a gurgle, like bathwater going down the drain. Now we could see into the clear-sided containers. Each held an identical Cara.

“It's not the real Cara,” I said with growing horror. “They're Cara-borgs. This must be where the aliens build their evil robots.”

The nearest one turned to find us in the gloom of the lab, her head swiveling like a doll's. Where the skin should have been tight across her cheekbone was instead exposed steel and one shining robot eye. She looked half-finished.

I knew what we were looking at. “These are prototypes,” I said.

Lara glanced at the phone. “My sister's entire life is on that phone. They must have been using it to program the robots so they'd act just like her. Uh-oh.”

“What?” I said.

“I know that look,” said Lara, eyeing the nearest Cara-borg. “She's not happy. We have to get out of here.”

“Right behind you,” I said. We hurried to the door as, with a whir, the containment tubes slid up into the ceiling.

“It is locked,” said Serge, rattling the door handle.

I looked back to see the Cara-borgs step out of their tubes in perfect synchronicity, their big boots clumping down on the floor with a collective thud. All wore the same combination of jeans and a faded purple T-shirt from a field-based music festival.

I looked at Lara. “We have to get out of here. Fast.”

“I'm on it.” She set the Wraith on the floor and issued a series of commands. The mole scampered to the door and squeezed his body through the narrow gap at the base. “He needs one minute,” said Lara.

“I do not think we have
une
minute,” Serge said with a gulp.

The Cara-borgs marched toward us, an approaching storm of whirling mechanical limbs and sickly sweet perfume. I had to buy us some time. But how? Lara's words came back to me.
My sister's entire life is on that phone.

Quickly I swiped through the lock screen and located the app I needed. I tapped
PLAY
and prodded the button on the side of the handset for maximum volume. I slid the phone across the floor. It came to rest at the feet of the approaching Cara-borgs.

From out of the speakers exploded the latest hit single from Billy Dark, Cara's favorite singer.

The descending boot of the first robot suddenly stopped. The Cara-borgs ground to a halt, as something deep in their programming responded to the music. One of them began to tap her toe. Puzzled, the others crowded around the tiny blaring phone. The hips of another started to sway. A cybernetic head bobbed. They couldn't stop themselves. The chorus kicked in, and as one, the Cara-borgs waved their arms in the air.

There was a click. The Wraith had unlocked the door from the other side. We dashed out into the corridor. I'd set the phone to play the whole Billy Dark album, which would probably keep the Cara-borgs busy for a while.

We raced around the next corner. I looked at my friends, and at the Wraith, peering from his pouch like a figurehead on the prow of a pirate ship, fur rippling. And for the first time I thought to myself,
We can do this. We can defeat the Overlord.

“Are you humming the main theme to
Superman
, the movie released in 1978?” asked Serge.

I hadn't realized I was doing it out loud.

“No, do not stop,” he said. “It is highly motivating.” He added his voice to mine.

Lara stared at us both for a moment, and with a shrug began to hum along too.