X-plosion Read online

  The crash was still ringing in my ears as Cody, Joe, and I sat up. There were shards of glass all over us, and Cody had a cut across his forehead, but no one seemed seriously injured.

  “Are you okay?” Joe said, turning to Cody.

  Cody nodded, too stunned to speak.

  Though the cube was soundproofed, the crash was so loud, the guards at the bottom of the stairs must have heard something. A pair of them came running up together. They stopped at the entrance to the room, clubs drawn. There was glass everywhere, and sparks flying from the wreckage of the video screens. They seemed unsure what to do.

  “You!” I said, pointing to one of the guards. “Go get the power turned off before those sparks start a fire.”

  The guard hesitated for a second, weighing the danger of leaving his post and getting in trouble with Tyrone against the danger of being the one responsible for a fire in the VIP section. Then he took off running.

  “This is…this is just too much,” Cody mumbled under his breath.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Joe asked him, reaching over to wipe the blood off Cody’s face.

  “All right? ALL RIGHT?” Cody’s calm finally cracked. “No, I’m not all right. In case you haven’t noticed, someone is trying to kill me! This whole place is cursed. I should have listened to London and gotten out of here days ago.”

  He was screaming now, almost as loud as Tyrone. “I’m getting out of here. Tonight.”

  Cody stood up and pulled out his cell phone.

  “David?”

  He paused, listening. Then he frowned.

  “Yeah, I’m all right. Did you hear the crash or something?” Before David could respond, he continued. “Look, get back to the VIP area. We’re leaving tonight. As far as I’m concerned, this competition is over.”

  Joe’s jaw dropped. Cody snapped his phone shut and began picking pieces of glass out of his clothes and throwing them angrily on the floor. I took Joe’s phone from him and called Tyrone. I explained what had happened. He was yelling before I’d even finished with the story.

  “That’s not all,” I told him. “Cody says he’s leaving tonight.”

  Tyrone grew quiet, which was even scarier than his yelling.

  “Keep him there,” he said. “Just for fifteen minutes. I’m on my way. Don’t let him leave. Do whatever it takes.”

  Short of tying him to one of the couches, I didn’t think there was anything I could do to keep Cody at Galaxy X. I couldn’t really blame him. If he hadn’t believed it before, tonight had made it clear: Someone was out to get him, and they weren’t going to stop until he was dead, or gone from Galaxy X. Maybe getting out of here would be the best thing for him.

  There was a commotion down at the base of the steps.

  What now? I thought. Could anything else go wrong tonight?

  Joe and I ran carefully over to the top of the steps, avoiding the glass and the smoking wires. Behind us, Cody continued hurling pieces of the screen and talking to himself I could hear David’s voice coming from down below.

  “I said let me in, you idiots! Get out of my way.”

  Before we could walk down the steps to investigate, Cody came over.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said. “The guards here can’t stop someone from trying to kill me, but they can hassle my best friend endlessly. All because he lost that stupid key Tyrone gave him.”

  Something clicked in my mind.

  “He lost what?” asked Joe. I could see by the expression on his face that he was thinking the same thing I was.

  “His VIP pass. During the chaos at the concert he must have dropped it, and someone probably took it as a souvenir. I’ve had to vouch for him everywhere we go since then.”

  I looked at Joe. He nodded.

  “Stay here,” I said to Cody. “No matter what you do. Don’t leave this room, and don’t let anyone in except for us or Tyrone. Got it?”

  “No way, man, I’m getting out of here as soon as David—”

  “Don’t even let David in,” Joe cut him off. “Especially not David.”

  Cody looked like he was going to argue with Joe.

  “Trust me,” Joe said. Cody nodded.

  We raced down the steps two at a time. David was still arguing with the guards at the bottom.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “These morons won’t let me in.” David seemed to have only one emotion: whiny. And I’d thought Bret Johnston was bad. David was ten times worse.

  “Oh,” I said, playing dumb. “Just show them your key.”

  “If it was that easy, I’d be in the VIP area already.” He looked at me as though I was an idiot. “I can’t find the stupid thing.”

  “Really?” said Joe. “Because Frank and I found this one over on the stage after the concert the other night.”

  Joe pulled the key Lenni had given us out of his pocket. David snatched for it, but Joe pulled it just out of reach.

  “Give that back to me!” David said. His voice was high and shaky. He was nervous.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “What were you doing over by the electrical box?”

  “That’s easy to explain,” David said. “I was—”

  Suddenly David shoved Joe and sent him flying into me. We stumbled backward as he took off running into the Videodrome. The guards were too shocked to do anything.

  “What are you guys doing?” Cody’s voice came from behind us. Looks like he hadn’t listened to Joe after all.

  “Stay here!” I yelled. Then Joe and I ran off after David.

  I could just make out his black-and-white-striped shirt disappearing down one of the long rows of arcade games. We raced after him. David ran straight into people, knocking them over left and right. As we ran, we had to jump and dodge around the people he left sprawled in his wake. I heard the loud footsteps of someone following us, and turned around to see Cody right on our tail.

  Joe was slightly ahead of me as we came to the end of the row of games. As he stopped to look and see which way David had gone, there came a low rumbling sound.

  “Look out!” I yelled. Joe jumped out of the way just as one of the arcade games came crashing down right where he had been standing. There was a puff of smoke from the inside of the machine, and I could smell plastic burning. We climbed over it and continued after David.

  Occasionally I lost sight of David as we ran, but it was easy to track the chaos he left behind him: people screaming, games knocked over. Even in the general noise and crowd of the Videodrome, he was obvious.

  He ran toward the section of old-fashioned games: pinball, skee-ball, air hockey. Once he ducked through the doors, he was out of sight. Luckily, the area was a dead end. We got inside, then paused for a moment, looking for him. But he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Ooph!”

  Something heavy had hit me in the chest, and I staggered to one side. A skee-ball bounced on the ground in front of me. Another came whizzing at Joe’s head, missing him by only a few short inches. We ducked and wove our way forward to the corner where the balls were coming from.

  “You’re not getting out of here, David,” I yelled. “Tyrone’s security guards are at every door. You might as well give yourself up.”

  I had learned something from Lenni. Tyrone had fired all his new security people and probably didn’t have enough to stop David from getting out of here if he managed to avoid us—but he didn’t know that.

  The balls stopped flying. David was nowhere in sight. This area of the Videodrome was slightly quieter than the rest, perhaps because many of the games were old-fashioned hand games and carnival games, without electronics or speakers.

  “There!” Cody whispered, pointing up toward the basket of a beanbag toss game. I could just make out a tuft of spiky black hair jutting up over the rim.

  I gestured to Cody to be quiet. Joe and I climbed up either side of the basket. On the count of three, we reached down and grabbed David by the arms, yanking him out of his hiding place.
<
br />   He came out passively. The energy seemed to have gone right out of him once he realized he was caught—until he saw Cody. Suddenly he was screaming and thrashing. He yanked his arm free of my grip. With his now free hand, he shoved Joe backward as hard as he could. Joe stumbled to the ground but managed to pull David down with him. I leaped on top of them, and between us, Joe and I pinned him to the ground.

  “This is your fault!” David screamed at Cody. “You forgot about me—you forgot about skating. All you care about is money and sponsorships and being famous! And they all eat it up.” His voice went high and wispy, like a girl’s. “Oh Cody, we love you. It makes me sick.”

  Cody’s face went white. His mouth was moving, but nothing came out. Finally, after a minute, he managed to speak.

  “But…I thought you were my friend,” he said.

  David continued to scream at him until Tyrone showed up a few minutes later with the police in tow. Apparently, dozens of people had called security to report David running wild through the Videodrome, and Tyrone had thought to bring actual police this time.

  We handed David’s key over to the officers and explained everything that Lenni had told us previously, although we left out the banner she had been intending to drop at the concert and her breaking and entering.

  David was done yelling now. He seemed defeated, and in an almost normal tone of voice, he told the cops all of it. How he had started off just wanting to make Tyrone cancel the competition, by sending him threatening text messages as “4Real.” When that didn’t work, he tried to injure Cody, to make him pull out of participating. When Joe got hurt on the ramp instead, and Cody continued to ignore him, David went further and further, finally trying to electrocute Cody on the night of the concert.

  “What about the tigers?” I asked. “And the rides you broke—you could have hurt a lot of other people.”

  David looked confused.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I didn’t touch the rides. I thought they just broke. And I’ve never even seen a tiger up close.”

  He also claimed to have no idea who Sk8rH8r was. As the cops pulled him to his feet and cuffed his hands behind him, I felt a chill in the pit of my stomach, but I tried to wave it away. He was probably just lying to save himself from a longer time in jail…I hoped.

  I almost felt sorry for him. It must have been hard to be less famous than Cody, and feel like he was losing his friendship. But losing a friend didn’t justify murder.

  JOE

  18

  An Explosive Performance

  I’ll give Tyrone this: He was a smart businessman. Before the cops had even hauled David Sanders out of the Videodrome, he was on the phone with every major TV station and newspaper, spreading the story that the “plot against Cody Zane” had been foiled by the “special undercover agents” Tyrone had hired—aka Frank and me. Thankfully, he didn’t mention us by name, but our cover here was definitely blown.

  By the next morning, the crowds had returned to Galaxy X three times as large. London was back at the judges’ table, freshly tanned from her modeling shoot. Everyone was in a great mood—Tyrone actually hugged Frank! Even the small legion of girls who had begun to build a memorial to Bret Johnston seemed slightly happier today, or at least less afraid that they were going to get blown up.

  After David was arrested, Cody decided to stick around Galaxy X. He seemed pretty shaken by all the things David had said about him, but I think it made him all the more determined to stay for the rest of the competition. There were only five skaters left, and today one of them would be crowned the winner of the Cody Zane Skate or Die Competition. Since we were back in Tyrone’s good graces, he had invited us to sit up at the judges’ table, but Frank and I decided to keep a low profile and stay in the crowd. No pointing in making it obvious who Tyrone’s two “secret agents” were. Now we were just waiting for the event to start.

  “Hey, guys.”

  A voice from behind me in the crowd startled me out of my thoughts. I turned around, and there was Lenni with a wide grin on her face. She had a long blond wig on and was wearing a dress and sandals. I almost didn’t recognize her. I had to admit, I was surprised to see her hanging out at Galaxy X, given her hatred for the place.

  “Hey!” said Frank. “You might not want to be here. I think Tyrone is still pretty angry at you.”

  “Why, thank you, Frank. Yes, I did break this case wide open for you. You are so welcome,” Lenni declared, in a tone of fake sincerity. Frank blushed and stammered an apology. I rushed in to save him.

  “He just doesn’t want to see anything happen to you, after you rescued us and everything.”

  “Hello!” Lenni pointed to the outfit she was wearing. “I can play secret agent too, you know?”

  She turned away from us for a second to hand some flyers to two guys walking past. “Galaxy X is a land-stealing corporation. All they care about is your money. Check out the truth. Have a good day!” The guys seemed confused, but when Lenni smiled at them, they took the pieces of paper from her and wandered off.

  “Works every time,” she said.

  I was glad to see she hadn’t changed her tune. She might have been a bit of a loose cannon, but she stuck to her principles. I respected her for that. I just hoped that she really wasn’t involved in any of the serious trouble happening at Galaxy X. Even though we had David Sanders in custody, there were still some accidents left unexplained. I hated to think she could be behind them…but I wanted to keep tabs on her anyway.

  “Are you going to stick around for the end of the competition?” I asked. “You know, you deserve to be up there.”

  “I’ll be around. But really, I shouldn’t be up there.” She paused, then smiled again. “I’m better than they are.”

  Frank laughed, and Lenni wandered off into the crowd, handing out more flyers as she went.

  “Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think that’s the last we’re going to see of her.”

  “Yeah. I just hope we’re on the same side next time.”

  The rest of the competition went smoothly. Each of the five skaters was given fifteen minutes to show off. Since the prize was to have a character created in your image in the upcoming video game, the skaters tried to show off their personality as well as their skills on the board.

  Rose was definitely the crowd favorite. She must have had friends in the audience, because when her turn came, the crowd pelted the area around the judges’ table with hundreds of roses in all different colors. The press loved it, snapping pictures and shooting video left and right, which made Tyrone even happier. This was the kind of headline he wanted to make. Cody had a huge grin on his face, and when Rose finished skating, he picked up one of the flowers off the stage and handed it to her. London looked a little bit irritated at that, but she laughed along with everyone else.

  It was no surprise when Rose was announced the winner of the tournament. After he called her name, Cody motioned for the crowd to be quiet.

  “I want to thank you all,” he said. “This competition was tough, and though there can be only one winner, I’ve seen a hundred amazing skaters over the past three days. More than that, I’ve seen the love of skating that everyone in this crowd has. I’d forgotten that part of skating, I think. When you become famous at something, it stops being about the love, and it all gets caught up in the money or the reputation. But today, everyone is here for the love. Which is why I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a long time.”

  Cody took a step back from the podium and walked over to the judges’ table. He lifted his Hubris brand skateboard over his shoulder and smashed the glass that protected his famous first skateboard. The crowd realized what was about to happen and went wild. Cody lifted the board out of the wreckage of the glass, strapped on his helmet, and walked down to the skating ramp.

  “Cody, Cody, Cody!”

  The crowd was chanting his name as he prepared to skate. He kicked off the side of the ramp and
flew down toward the middle.

  But something was wrong. He was wobbling on the board. As he tried to do a jump, the board flew out from under him. Cody’s head slammed into the side of the ramp, and he went down hard.

  The stunned crowd stood in a shocked silence. Frank and I ran over to the ramp. Frank knelt by Cody’s body.

  “He’s still breathing. Someone call an ambulance!” he shouted.

  There was a wave of beeps and blips as hundreds of cell phones all dialed 911 at the same time. I grabbed Cody’s skateboard to make sure it didn’t get lost. It felt strangely heavy, and there was an odd sound coming from it. I flipped it over.

  “Frank!”

  I showed the back of the skateboard to him. Strapped to the bottom was a black box with a digital counter on it. It was a bomb—and it was wired to go off in fifteen seconds!

  “Get Cody out of here!” I yelled to Frank.

  The counter on the bomb clicked down. Fourteen seconds. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.

  Cody started to wake up, but he was too disoriented to move. I looked around frantically. The crowd surrounded us a hundred feet in every direction. There was no way to get the bomb to some safe, empty place before it blew.

  Suddenly Lenni came flying out of the crowd. She grabbed the board from my hands.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed. This was suicide.

  Lenni ignored me and began skating. She went up one side of the ramp and down the other, gaining speed with each pass. I knew the timer was ticking down on the bottom of the board, and under my breath I counted down the seconds.

  Five…four…three…

  Lenni was skating as fast as I had ever seen anyone go. She made it to the top of the ramp with one second left on the timer. Right at the peak, she leaped off the boards. Free of Lenni’s weight, the skateboard continued on its way, flying off the top edge of the ramp and straight up into the air. Just as Lenni landed back down at the bottom of the ramp, it exploded harmlessly in the air.