Free Crisis Zero by Chris Rylander Page B

yet it makes perfect sense!”
    But Danielle noticed right away what I was talking about. Several of our other friends had, too. It was hard to miss a guy like Gus Agriopoulas charging across a school cafeteria with an expression like that on his face.
    His expression could best be described as Grim Reaper.
    I stood up quickly, accidentally knocking over my chair, drawing even more attention to the whole mess. For a moment, running seemed like the best option. But, then again, I was dealing with one of the fastest kids in the entire state. He’d probably be winning varsity high school track meets as an eighth grader later in the school year, breaking records set by kids four years older than him. I held up my hands.
    â€œWhat did I tell you?” Gus shouted, only a few feet away from me now.
    At this point, I had two options:
    Cower and get the snot literally beaten out of my nasal cavity.
    Try to figure out if Gus was working with Medlock, and then get the snot literally beaten out of my nasal cavity.
    The way I figured it, if I was going to get pummeled in front of the whole school, I might as well accomplish something important while it happened.
    â€œWait, wait,” I said, sounding desperate enough to make Gus pause right as he got to my table. I took a stepback and spoke quickly, while I still had a fully operational mouth. “Did Medlock tell you to do this? Was it you who framed Gomez?”
    I tried to speak softly, so that only he would hear me, since basically the entire cafeteria was watching us now.
    My words stopped Gus dead in his tracks. His eyebrows furrowed up into a scrunchy mess on his forehead. Then he tilted his head like a dog seeing himself in the mirror for the first time.
    â€œWhat are you talking about, Fender?” he asked.
    He looked so utterly baffled that he might even have been reconsidering getting into a fight with me. What I had said must have sounded crazy, and crazy kids were unpredictable. Now that I was pretty sure Gus had no connection to Medlock (no one was that good an actor, not even Meryl Streep), I decided to play it up, try and use that angle to my advantage, now that I had it.
    â€œI’m talking about jam!” I shouted, trying to sound like a lunatic, channeling my inner Dillon. “Raspberry jam! Gus-Putin, you’ve got to try my raspberry toe jam!”
    I started flapping my arms like a bird. Gus took a step back. It was working! I was actually scaring him away from—
    And that’s when Gus’s fist connected with my sternum. I have no idea why he went for a torso punch instead of caving in my face, but I suppose either way it was definitely a sign that he had tired of my antics rather quickly.
    I flew back about five feet and landed hard. My chest felt like it had shattered into a million pieces. I gasped once and started climbing back to my feet. With a guy like Gus, you couldn’t ever let your defenses down, no matter how bad you were hurt. Gus didn’t feel remorse or empathy. He wouldn’t stop a beating out of pity or satisfaction. Once he decided to destroy you, he wouldn’t stop until someone made him stop.
    I figured I had at least a small chance; after all, I was a secret agent who had taken down fully grown men with huge machine guns before.
    But I never even got the chance to fight back against Gus, because the lunchroom aides were closing in on us now. Which, to be honest, I was pretty happy about. Three teachers swooped in and grabbed both Gus and me and then marched us out of the cafeteria while the fourth teacher tried to calm the cheering students and herd them back to their lunch tables.
    Gus and I were taken to Mr. Gomez’s office. Or, hisformer office—it wasn’t his office anymore. The nameplate on the door had been replaced with a new one:
    M S. J AYNE P ULLMAN
    Ms. Pullman was behind the desk beyond the open door as we were led to the two chairs just outside the office. She sat there