

SpyCam:

The School Secret

# By Zoe Wynns
Stop Right Here! This book is the third in a series. If you haven't read the first and second books, SpyCam: The President Plot, and SpyCam: The Android Attack, you can download them from these links:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/734413 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745656

## Or search the names on the iBook store. This book will make more sense and be more enjoyable if you've already read the first two.
Praise for Zoe Wynns

"Zoe Wynns is a talented young writer who is off to a terrific start with SpyCam: The President Plot. This is an entertaining and well-paced read, driven by spirited 14-year-old Cam and her plucky BFF, Stella. Zoe's novel has suspense, adventure and a lot of heart — a combination that will leave readers eager to take more fictional journeys with Cam and crew!"

—Tracie Fellers (fiction and nonfiction author with work in Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-Five of North Carolina's Finest Writers, and 27 Views of Raleigh)

"Zoe Wynns is an amazing author. Her first two books were well written and interesting. I have read Journey to the End five times. Her book, Flicker, Fade, Soar, that I recently just finished, was awesome. This new book is obviously another masterpiece. Keep going Zoe!"

-Caleb McLamb (CEO of M-Tech)

"Zoe Wynns has done it again. Her SpyCam books are the sort of chair-gripping page-turners that grab you at the prologue and continue to hold on after the final page has been read. But it's not only the 394 unexpected plot twists that make her writing impossible to put down; her characters, too, are unforgettable. Whether it's selfless Cam, spunky Stella, or power-crazed Shardstorm, Zoe's characters don't just come alive off the page -- they jump out at you with every witty remark or infamous almost-kiss, throwing confetti into the air (or in Shardstorm's case, bombs). In short? Zoe's novels are the rare, wonderful kind that will touch your heart and stay there forever."

-Luna Hou (winner of Wake County's annual Teen Poetry Contest)

"If you are into spies, youth fiction, and adventure, Zoe Wynns is an up-and-coming author you should definitely check out. Her SpyCam series features a strong, bright female protagonist who faces a world of conquering the bad guys with ingenuity, humor and a minimum of blood and gore. Wholesome excitement that will keep you turning pages until the end... and then you start the next book!"

-Kathryn Tinsley, former college psychology instructor

This book has been republished in 2019 with minor edits, but the original message to readers has been left below.

### I am fourteen years old. SpyCam: The School Secret is my fifth self-published book. Feel free to send me feedback if you find a mistake in the book, but know that I tried my best, worked very hard on the book, and I am very proud of the final novel. Thank you for downloading or purchasing this book.

### If you enjoy this book, feel free to download my four other self-published books. Journey to the End is available on Kindle, iBooks, and Smashwords. Flicker, Fade, Soar is available on iBooks and Smashwords. SpyCam: The President Plot is available on iBooks and Smashwords, and SpyCam: The Android Attack is available on iBooks and Smashwords as well.

### A new book, Awaken Illusionia, will be available by the end of 2017 on iBooks and Smashwords, so stay on the lookout!

### Now, in 2019, I'm sixteen years old! I've written a total of eight books, and you can check them out on iBooks or Smashwords.

### Please rate this book or write a quick review if you enjoy it! Thanks in advance!

### I hope you enjoy SpyCam: The School Secret!
This is a work of fiction. While some businesses and places do exist that I've mentioned, any interactions inside those places or any descriptions of those places are purely fictional. All persons are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is published by Smashwords. No part of this book may be copied or reproduced without the consent of Zoe Wynns. All questions to thewynnsfamily@gmail.com.

Summary: Cam goes to high school posing as just a normal girl, but really, she's a girl on a mission for the Spies that Protect Our World. She has to uncover the secret enemy agent, who is a student in the school.

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Copyright © 2017 Zoe Wynns.

### Prologue

"We're losing," the supervillain snarled, anger lacing his tone.

He began to pace around the main control center of his secret lair. The walls rose rough and gray around him. Every few feet, a diagram or board outlining his newest and biggest plans hung on the wall, little beacons of white in the cavern of darkness. The high ceiling was a smooth, solid, black. The color of evil, the supervillain thought. The color of darkness, of destroyed dreams, lost hopes, ruined plans.

That's what the girl has done to me, the villain thought angrily. That's what their idiot organization has done to me. They've destroyed my dreams. Made me lose my hopes. Ruined my plans.

Suddenly, the villain's mind sparked.

He'd had an idea.

An evil, genius idea.

"What if we reverse the damage?" the villain whispered.

The cogs in his brain whirred and buzzed as the pieces of the puzzle came together. He paced faster and faster.

"It would take work, of course. A little work. A lot of work. But my scientists could do it," he muttered, suddenly coming to a stop. "But we'd need a decoy. They couldn't see what we were really working on. So..."

"Sons!" the villain suddenly snapped, jerking his head upwards.

"Yes, father?" came two, smooth, suave voices from the corner of the main control center.

A normal person would have never suspected that they would be there. But a spy would know that a villain always kept his or her accomplices near. Near enough to be called on at any second.

And the spy would be right, like spies usually are, because from the corner of the room, two figures of medium height suddenly appeared out of the shadows in the corner of the room, brushing their sandy blonde and light brown hair out of their tan, calm, faces.

"You called, father?" the one on the left with the light brown hair said coolly, his deep, dark blue eyes sparkling with malice. "Have you finally come up with a plan to annihilate the spies once and for all?"

"Yes," the supervillain said quietly. Then his face morphed into a grin. "Yes! YES! I have it! You—" he said suddenly, spinning around and pointing his finger at his two sons. The one on the right with the sandy blonde hair jumped a little then immediately pretended like he'd just been snapping to attention.

"You..." continued the villain, "are going to high school."

Silence in the lair of evil. The only sound was the slow and steady drip, drip of a leak in the middle of the room from the hole in the ceiling that one of his idiot androids had busted.

"I must have heard you wrong, father. I could have sworn that you just said you were sending us, two supervillains in training, one of which who could kill a grown man eight different ways with his bare hands and the other of which is still..." the brown-haired boy glanced at the other, "let's say, learning... I could have sworn you said we were going to high school."

The boy with sandy hair scowled at the other, but his expression was immediately drowned by the massive glare the supervillain gave to both his sons. When their attention had returned to him, a sly grin spread across his face. "Yes. West Oliver Paige Top School, to be exact."

"Wait." The sandy-haired boy spoke. "Isn't that the high school that the girl... Cam, is going to?"

The villain smirked. "Now you're starting to understand. I have a plan, a master plan, a genius plan. And while I work on it... you'll be my decoy. And I wouldn't mind a little information, if you could get it."

"Oh. I see now..." the light-brown haired boy spoke, his deep blue eyes glittering with annoyance. "We're going undercover. We're sinking to their level. To the level of the common spy. You haven't come up with some daring plan, father. This is something that their idiot organization would come up with."

"Don't you insult me," the villain snapped. "Just because I don't share my plan with you doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And just because you're my favorite son now doesn't mean that can't change."

The sandy-haired boy's face sunk as the boy who had spoken gave him a smirk.

"But, for the most part, yes, Jai, you're correct," the villain said coldly. "We're going to stop them in their tracks once and for all. Using technology that we didn't think was possible before. Technology that we can use to make sure my previous plans succeed. Technology we can use to reverse the roles. Reverse the current winner."

The villain heaved a deep breath.

"It's time that Shardstorm takes the lead."

### Chapter One

"Okay, you really need to tell me where you're driving me now," I said impatiently, but with a hint of a smile in my voice.

The rhythmic whir and hum of the car floated all around me as I wrapped the baby-blue blanket I'd brought tighter around myself, my short brown hair swishing. The blanket had a pattern of orange tabby cats and bright white daffodils on it. Those two things normally did not mix, but apparently, they were both so well-liked that the blanket had been created.

I was glad for it. It was freezing in the car.

"I already told you, Cam, I'll tell you when we get there," my mom laughed from the seat beside me.

Her dark brown hair with natural streaks of red was pulled back into a tight bun. Even with the early-morning look she'd pulled together, with dark blue yoga capris and a long-sleeved shirt from one of the many races she'd done, she still managed to look stylish. I didn't know how she did it, because I certainly did not look fashionable in my giant T-shirt or my fuzzy pajama pants with penguins on them.

My mom smiled to herself as she made a left turn. I craned my neck to try to see the street sign on our GPS, but my mom blocked it with a grin, her painted red nails jumping in front of my chocolate-brown eyes. "Not yet, Cam-girl. It's a surprise."

"I don't like surprises before 8:00 am," I groaned, leaning back into the black faux-leather seat. "There better be a really good reason you woke me up early on the last day of summer... my last day to sleep in for an entire year..."

"You have the weekends, and plus, didn't that camp we sent you off to this summer say something about an in-school program that you might be able to go to instead of this not-so-good high school we're planning on sending you to?" My mother raised her eyebrows at me.

"West Oliver Paige Top School is pretty good," I argued playfully.

"But seriously, you must tell me more about the young author's camp I sent you to for a precious four weeks this summer," pressed my mother, looking me in the eyes. "I've not heard anything about it, except that you wrote a lot of adventure and spy stories."

My heart hiccupped. Nervousness ran through my veins, and even as I prepped my response, I felt guilt rush through my mind. I was going to have to lie to my mother.

Again.

Because I had a secret, a secret that would be disastrous if it came out.

I, Cam Grace Noble, was a spy.

It sounded cooler at the beginning, to be honest, before I was shot, stabbed, knocked unconscious multiple times, poisoned, and almost blown up by a bomb. I thought being a spy would be the coolest thing to ever happen to me. And it was! I just didn't expect the nearly-dying-multiple-times part. That was less cool.

It had all started when I'd received a message in my desk near the end of eighth grade from a mysterious spy organization that called themselves the Spies That Protect Our World, or the STPOW, as it was lovingly shortened. They said they needed help with an urgent mission to save the life of the President that was being threatened by a villain named Shardstorm. With a boy named Jai, a girl named Taylor, and the unexpected addition of my best friend Stella, I managed to thwart his plan. But it turned out Jai and a supposed Agent for the STPOW named Agent Wolf were traitors working for Shardstorm, and in the process of trying to save ourselves and the President, Taylor died. She had sacrificed herself so that I could live, and I wish I'd gotten the chance to thank her.

I was just recovering from that mission when an attack was launched by Shardstorm on the STPOW headquarters where I was currently staying to train. Shardstorm had captured a young trainee, Zoey, and threatened to kill her if I did not come to train to be a villain with him, along with my friend, Emmi. So, I had (not truly, of course), and while trying to save Zoey, I discovered a gigantic secret that Shardstorm had been keeping. Emmi was an android, and she'd been created by Shardstorm.

Things had started happening fast after that. I learned Emmi had been created for the reason that she'd had a code that allowed her to control all the intelligent androids that had ever been made. Shardstorm planned to use this program to take over the world, but I'd stopped him before he could. A lot of his headquarters had been destroyed in the process of the Android Attack (that's what the STPOW had taken to calling it) and so we were hoping Shardstorm would stay quiet for a good long while.

"Cam? Cam, hon, you listening to me? We're here," my mom's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. I jerked my head towards her and blinked. "Did you doze off for a moment there, Cam-girl? I'm sorry, I woke you up way too early today. You can tell me about your camp later."

I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd delayed the inevitable lying about where I really was during those four weeks... for now.

Then her words sunk in. "Wait, we're where?"

"The airport," my mother said cheerfully, flinging the car door open and motioning for me to get out.

"Why are we at the airport?" I groaned, slowly opening the bright red car door. We'd had this model for years, but we'd gotten it washed the day before. With all the bird poop, fingerprints, and bug guts washed away, it almost looked like a brand-new car.

"Well, who can you think of that lives far away from us?" my mom teased, starting to walk briskly towards the visitor's entrance. Thousands of cars were crammed into the small parking lot, and I stared at the varying license plates as we walked past the array of colors.

"Uncle Josh is in Virginia, but he could drive. Grandma and Grandpa live in..."

Then I realized.

"Oh my gosh. Valorie," I said breathlessly, all my other trains of thought cut off as I sprinted past my mom and threw open the visitor's center door.

My mom laughed and walked faster to follow, a telltale smile on her face. "You didn't think your sister would miss your first day of high school, now would you?"

"Is she here?" I gasped. "Already?"

As soon as I'd said the words, I saw her from across the visitor's center of the airport. Through the mass of stressed and worried people, trying not to miss their flights, my older sister's smile shone like a beacon across the room. Her whole face crinkled in a smile, her left dimple shining bright even from fifty feet away, and she shouted, "CAM!" so loud that the people around her stared.

But I didn't care. I couldn't care less.

I bolted across the room towards my one and only sister, the sister who I thought I wouldn't see for another year. Valorie had been at a university all year (a pretty prestigious one, at that). She'd been accepted into the summer program there, so we didn't expect her to be visiting until next summer because the flight was so very long. But she'd squeezed in time for us. She'd made time for me.

I pushed through the crowd, squeezing between a toddler and his exasperated mother before running full out into Valorie's open arms. She hugged me tight, her silver and gold bangle bracelets cutting into my skin. I breathed in her scent, a mixture of raspberries and roses. Valorie's long, long dyed-dirty-blonde hair tickled my face and I wanted to sneeze.

It was pretty much the best hug ever.

Finally, we pulled apart. "How've you been, gal?" Valorie asked with a grin. Her brown eyes sparkled and danced.

"Great!" I said back. I smiled so hard it hurt. "I have so much to tell you." A small burst of sadness raced through me as I realized that I couldn't tell Valorie what I had really been doing for a lot of the summer.

But not even that thought could ruin this perfect moment. My mom had finally pushed through the crowd, smiling exasperatedly as she reached Valorie. "Got to keep an eye on this one, Val. She darts away from you like a guppy whenever she gets the chance."

"No, not Cam," teased Valorie, shaking her head. Her silver hanging earrings clanked softly. "Cam wouldn't do that." Then she hugged my mom tight, releasing a bit sooner than she had with me.

"Wow," my mom said once she'd let go. "You're so tall! I thought you were supposed to stop growing at age seventeen or eighteen, but you're twenty and going strong."

"I plateaued at 5'7" years ago, Momma," Valorie responded with a grin, stepping back a little and almost trampling a little boy. His mother gave Valorie an evil glare, but she didn't notice.

"You're going to be a junior in college," my mom said with wonder, shaking her head in disbelief. "My little baby's all grown up."

"Mom, Cam's not necessarily a toddler anymore either," Valorie pointed out. "She's going into high school!"

"Ugh, why did you have to remind me?" Mom said in mock annoyance, her brown eyes glittering with laughter.

Comfortable silence for a moment. We all beamed at each other.

"Well, we should probably head back to the house. We need to take Cam school shopping this morning, actually," my mom spoke up as we all started to walk back to the visitor's entrance.

"Yeah, hope I can tag along," Valorie added, falling into step with us. Our feet thumped easily on the ground in step with each other. "What's Dad doing today?"

"Working hard, as usual," Mom answered with a slight sigh. "He wished he could be here to welcome you, but you know how his boss gets."

"Do I ever," Valorie huffed. "He's still working for that lunatic?"

"He seemed okay when I met him," I spoke up, reaching the gray visitor's center door first and opening it.

"Just wait until you see him if Dad ever has to take a sick day." Valorie shook her head exasperatedly. "Phew."

Peals of laughter and the whir of cars echoed in the low-ceilinged room as we walked back to our tiny little car.

Valorie opened the front seat, passenger side. "Hey!" I protested, but Val just laughed. "When you've come back after a year of college and an intense summer program, you can have shotgun then. But for now, it's mine. Unless you want me to drive, Mom," she amended. "I'll bet you're exhausted."

"Not too much." My mom waved her comment off, putting her keys into the ignition as I buckled in. "You're probably much more tired than I am."

"Am I ever," responded Valorie with a yawn. "Would you be offended if I took a quick nap on the way back?"

"You nap to your heart's content, Valorie," I laughed. Then I yawned. "Dang it! You made me yawn."

"You should sleep too, Cam," my mom's voice said, but it seemed like it was from very far away, the rhythms of the car were already lulling me into...

Sleep.

### Chapter Two

We got back from the airport and immediately I changed my clothes, not wanting to see another penguin on my pajama pants in my life. I decided on wearing a light pink, flowy shirt with a blue undershirt and black leggings.

I looked around my room with bright purple walls and clothes and trash scattered haphazardly about the floor. I loved my room, with its beautiful gray furniture and my stack of books on my night table a mile high.

But I couldn't help, at the same time, missing my room at the STPOW. The walls there were my favorite colors, and I was allowed to decorate the room however I liked. And, for an added bonus, the entire time I was there, I had all my friends around me!

But family was family, and home was home, and I still adored my room. My first bedroom. My only bedroom. I'd once shared it with Valorie, but then she'd taken over our old playroom when I was born. Yet still, I was here, in the same bedroom I'd always had. It had different furniture, of course.

But some things were still very much the same.

The bright purple walls that my parents had so eagerly decided on before Valorie was born.

The small little stain in the corner next to my white door that I'd make when I spilled a huge bowl of ice cream in my room at age five. No more food was taken upstairs after that.

The little nook behind my bed where Valorie and I used to hide and giggle for hours. The place in the middle of the room where carpet was bare, from when Valorie and I stuffed our mouths with gum at age six and twelve, then accidentally dropped most of it on the carpet floor. My mom had tried for hours to remove it, and taken out a lot of the carpet in the process.

Finally, I stopped reminiscing, pulled on a white headband and headed down our hardwood stairs. All of our upstairs rooms (mine, my mom and dad's, Valorie's) were carpeted, except for the bathroom and Valorie's room. Her room had dull beige walls, and it was usually empty now. My mom had commandeered it as an office at the times Valorie was away. Now, an air bed had been blown up for the three weeks Val was going to stay with us, and the desk had been moved to Mom and Dad's room.

My socked feet made soft thumps on the stairs. Valorie walked by with a huge plate of pancakes covered in whipped cream.

"I want some of those pancakes," I grinned, rushing down the stairs.

She glanced up at me and teased, "Don't slip!"

"I know my way around," I grumbled playfully. "I've lived here kind of longer than you have."

"Noooo you haven't," Valorie said in a singsong voice from the dining room. "You've just lived here more recently than I have."

Thirty minutes and way too many squirts of whipped cream later, Valorie, Mom and I were walking into Target. Signs beckoned us from every direction. SCHOOL SUPPLIES, HALF OFF! School shop this way! Last-minute shoppers here!

"We're not last-minute shoppers," my mom argued back to the signs, taking in the rainbow of binders, notebooks, and folders that were rapidly being snatched up by frantic students and parents.

Valorie grinned. "Cam's school starts tomorrow. We're totally last-minute shoppers."

But I wasn't listening to them anymore, because I'd caught the eye of someone as we walked into the next row...

"Agent— uh, Mr. James!" I called, maybe a tiny bit too loudly. "And Ms. Abercrombie!"

It was indeed two of my teachers from school, but little did my mom and sister know, they were something much more.

These two teachers were Agents for the STPOW, undercover as teachers at my middle school to protect the headquarters underneath it. Mr. James' Agent name was Agent Semaj, and Ms. Abercrombie's was Agent Rivers.

Valorie looked at me, then looked at the Agents. A large family with three crying little girls, their hair done up in cutesy bows, all screaming, "Why can't we get the kitten notebooks?!?" squeezed past us as the two "teachers" made a beeline for my little family.

"Well, hello!" Agent Semaj spoke up first, his hazel eyes sparkling from behind his thick, square glasses. The STPOW had recently done a study proving that people wearing glasses seemed more open and innocent than those without, so Agent Semaj had started wearing them purely for show. Things like this were normal occurrences in the world of the spy.

Glasses on Agent Rivers, however, wouldn't make her look more innocent even if you put puppies and hearts on the rims and modified them to enlarge her stony eyes. Agent Rivers just had that presence that spoke don't mess with me. Her wavy chestnut hair was parted severely, and her gray-green eyes were hard. There was no spark of recognition, no understanding or silent little laugh in her eyes.

"Oh, Cam, are these some of your teachers?" Valorie said lightly.

I'd learned a crucial tip during my training as a spy; if someone came up with an explanation for something, it was much easier to let them follow that explanation than to come up with an entirely new one.

Plus, Agent Semaj and Agent Rivers were my teachers. I'd had them in math and social studies.

"Yes. Mom, Valorie, this is my eighth-grade math teacher, Mr. James, and social studies teacher, Ms. Abercrombie," I responded smoothly, gesturing to them.

"Hello! I'm Cam's mom," my mother said brightly, giving Agent Semaj and Agent Rivers firm handshakes. "Are you the two teachers who run that writing camp that we sent Cam to this summer? It seemed like she really enjoyed it, but she's barely told me anything about it! Almost like she's hiding something," Mom continued with a little laugh, not even aware that she'd just said something dangerous.

Very dangerous.

Memory-wiping dismissing-Cam-from-the STPOW dangerous.

Agent Rivers gave me a quick, hard glare, then snapped her head back to my mother with a fake laugh that sounded so real I almost believed it was. "Teenagers. Never want to talk, do they?"

Then she fixed her gray eyes on my face, with many unsaid words behind the look that couldn't be said at the moment but certainly would be later.

Agent Semaj took over. "Well, I can assure you, Cam had a great time. She's such a natural at writing, a very talented young lady. She learned a lot."

"Oh, I'm so glad. And it really was that low of a cost? I can donate more if the camp needs it," my mom said, reaching for her wallet subconsciously.

"No!" Agent Semaj and I said together loudly. My mother looked startled, and Agent Semaj quickly covered it up. "Thank you, ma'am, but the camp really is budget-friendly, and the entry fees are plenty." I'd learned that the STPOW charged just enough money to make parents believe that a camp actually existed, but minimal enough that they would agree to send their kids there.

Plus, money was tight in our family. Minimal cost sounded perfect.

"Well, alright then," Mom conceded, taking her hand off her pocket. "Nice to meet you both! We have some school shopping to do."

"Speaking of school," Agent Rivers butted in, "can we have a quick word with Cam about writing program opportunities during the school year? She was one of our best students and we'd like to continue working with her."

Valorie glanced at me and raised her eyebrows, her earrings clinking and her long ponytail swishing. You've been busy, she mouthed. I gave her a helpless grin back.

My mom seemed pleasantly surprised. She adjusted her grip on our cart, and the wheels squeaked. "Sure, that's fine. We'll keep looking for the rest of the items on your list. Meet us back here when you're done, kay?"

I nodded, and then fleetingly glanced at their retreating forms down the aisle before looking expectantly at Agent Semaj and Rivers. "So? Is there a new mission?"

Agent Rivers whirled around, putting a finger to her lips. "Shhhhhh!" A college student slipped past us, glancing at Agent Rivers and making the cuckoo sign at his ear. The binders in his basket clacked.

I gave Agent Rivers a smug look. "What were you saying?"

Agent Semaj took over, giving me a chiding glance. "Well. We have intel from one of our sources who is watching Shardstorm's headquarters. Shardstorm's building something. Something big. It seems to be either a nuclear weapon or a high-tech teleportation or traveling device."

"Ugh. He never quits," I groaned. "When will we catch a break?"

"Not until he's dead," Agent Rivers broke in grimly.

"But that's not the point," continued Agent Semaj with a pointed look at his fellow Agent. "The point is that we need you to find out what this is. And we have the perfect way for you to do so, because Shardstorm is sending Jai, Asher and his new trainee to West Oliver Paige Top School, the exact same school you've been assigned to," Agent Semaj told me cheerfully. "It's the perfect mission."

"Shardstorm's sending Jai to high school?" I spluttered.

It was odd, even though only a few months ago I had been in middle school with Jai, my picture of him had changed so much over the summer that I didn't think I could imagine him at a public school any more than I could Shardstorm himself.

"And Asher. And his new unidentified trainee. Your mission is this: uncover the new trainee, find out what Shardstorm's building, and help us come up with a way to stop it. You will also be working with Agents Star, Whisper, Bloom, Wisp, and X." These Agents were my best friend, Stella, the android Emmi, cheerful new Agent Marlee, my kind-of boyfriend Lukas, and the bad-girl-gone-good Aury.

Agent Semaj locked his eyes onto mine, his eyes intense. Talking about the STPOW always made him like this. "I will be posing as a teacher there, as will Agent Rivers and Agent Swan." Huh, I hadn't seen much of Agent Swan lately. She was Marlee's mother.

"So, are you in? We don't have much time to give you an official plan, but here's a packet," Agent Rivers said, pulling a pack of stapled papers out of her large purse (the purse was black, perhaps a silent rebellion against purses in general) and thrusting it at me. "We'll meet in our secondary headquarters underneath West Oliver Paige Top School after the first day tomorrow. The official story is chess club, just so you know."

"You have a secondary headquarters underneath my high school?" I spluttered.

Agent Semaj nodded. "See you tomorrow." Then he seemed to remember something. "Oh, by the way, your schedule has been modified so that you have two classes with Jai, one of which I teach, and two with Asher, one of which Agent Rivers teaches," he told me, handing me a folded piece of paper that he'd pulled out of his pocket. "You also have math with Stella and Creative Writing with Lukas."

Yes!

Then a thought struck me. "Wait, how were you able to modify my schedule so easily?"

Agent Rivers smirked. "The STPOW has many strategically placed Agents."

"Now we must go and report to Agent," Agent Rivers told me with a bit of impatience in her voice. "We've got places to be."

"Agent who?" I asked.

"The leader of the STPOW is always just given the name Agent as a show of respect. Currently, that leader is Angie's mother," Agent Semaj explained. Angie was one of the younger current trainees.

They both said goodbyes and walked off. I found my mom and sister and continued shopping.

And it was only when we walked out of Target, laden with bags, that I realized I had no idea how the Agents had known I was school shopping there in the first place.
Chapter Three

"Now, Cam, don't forget to eat your lunch, and text me when you make it to school safely, and don't talk to too many boys... just kidding!" my mom amended when she saw the horrified look on my face as Lukas flashed into my mind.

I was in my living room, getting ready for school. The fireplace sat comfortably underneath the television where I was watching the early morning news as I perched on our squishy gray couch. My mom was hovering over me nervously, watching me finish my cereal.

Valorie was nearby in our kitchen, going through all our cabinets. She called to us from the other room, shutting a small wooden drawer with a bang. "You keep extra school supplies there now? I liked the old drawer better! But wait. If that's there, then where are the towels?"

I shrugged my aqua bookbag onto my shoulders with a grin, standing up and pacing over to the sink, where I tossed my bowl, maybe a little carelessly. It clattered into the silverware already within. "Careful, Cam!" Mom told me quickly.

"It's okay, Mom, it didn't break," I said a little exasperatedly. I grabbed my blue and pink striped lunchbox from the counter, and looked around to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. My eyes were drawn to my pink and black phone on my mom's desk. I grabbed it and shoved it in the back pocket of my shorts.

My mom sighed. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm just a bit stressed."

"I'm just going to high school. It's not that big a deal, Mom." I gave her a hug anyway. "Bye. Love you. I'll be fine, I swear. I'm excited," I fibbed.

I was actually rather nervous. I'd probably be nervous even if I wasn't going to have two classes with a boy who had tried to kill me on multiple occasions. That just made it worse.

Anyway, at least I had a class with Stella.

And Lukas.

Especially Lukas.

"Bye, Cam!" Valorie called, closing a cabinet. "Here, let me walk you out to your bus stop."

I would have refused if it was my mom, but something felt comforting about being ushered to a new stage in my life by a sister who could tell me all about it. "Sure."

We filed out our oak door, shutting it behind us with a slight slam. Our summer wreath rattled.

There were already lots of kids waiting at the bus stop. Almost all of them looked exhausted; our bus came at 6:25 in the morning and most teens woke up an hour or more before that. Me, I rolled out of bed at six am and I made it just fine.

We walked in silence for a moment, then Valorie said, "You have a boyfriend, don't you?"

I was shocked into stopping for a moment. "No. Not officially. Well, okay. Kind of," I admitted.

I started walking again. "Is it a boyfriend if we've been on exactly two dates? They weren't really even dates," I amended. "More like, hey, we both like each other so let's hang out kind of things."

I paused for a moment. The only sounds were my tennis shoes and Valorie's flip-flops thudding and slapping the ground. "How did you know?"

"No teenage girl should look that terrified when her mother tells her not to talk to boys," laughed Valorie. "You should talk to Mom about it. Are you even allowed to date?"

"We're not dating!" I protested loudly. We were nearing the bus stop, and one of my friends from last year looked up when she heard my voice, then gave me a small wave. I waved back, then turned to Valorie.

"Has he kissed you?" she asked seriously.

"No," I said hotly, blushing. In that moment, I was kind of glad that Stella had burst in on Lukas and I during the summer when we were about to...

"Have you held hands? Hugged?"

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm his girlfriend."

Suddenly I wondered why I was protesting so strongly against her. Wasn't that what I'd wanted for the longest time? Didn't I stay up at night sometimes, wondering why, if Lukas really did like me, he hadn't asked me out yet? And now I didn't want my sister to think we were dating?

Maybe it was kind of a secretive instinct that I had, to hide Lukas away so that nobody could see him, be near him... have a crush on him. I didn't know. All I knew was that I had reached the bus stop, and I had a sudden urge to get rid of Valorie.

"Thanks for walking me over, Val. Bye," I waved at her.

She got the message and walked off, giving me one more smile.

A girl I knew from my math class last year, Violet, plodded up to me. She waved, giving me a small smile. Her smooth olive skin glistened in the sunlight, and her eyes were a luminous brown. She was a bit chubby, but amazingly beautiful. Last year, she'd confided in me that people bullied her because she was Korean. I'd vowed to myself that I'd been a friend to her, but only a couple days after she'd told me, I'd been inducted into the STPOW. It was distracting, and I hadn't really hung out with her since.

Her real name was Eun-Kyung, but she'd nicknamed herself Violet so it would be easier for people to pronounce her name. (I'd tried pronouncing Eun-Kyung last year, and though I'd failed miserably, Violet was nice enough to tell me I was close). She was bouncy and fun, but when she'd been bullied last year, she'd gotten so quiet and subdued that I barely recognized her. Luckily, now, she was mostly back to her vibrant self.

"Hey, Violet!" I greeted her warmly. Violet was wearing a... well, violet shirt. Petals bloomed across the surface, and seemed to travel right down to her embroidered jeans. I self-consciously glanced down at my own teal shirt, white sweater, and black leggings. Was it too boring for the first day of school? Well, I was wearing a small necklace with a silver cross for some accent.

"How was your summer?" Violet asked me with a grin. "Mine was great. We visited my family and friends in Korea." She bounced a little. "Fun!"

"That sounds really cool," I told her. Her excitement was contagious and I couldn't help but beam back. "I went to a..." my brain momentarily froze as I forgot what kind of camp that I was pretending to have gone to, "...writing camp that I really liked."

Jeez, what was wrong with me today?

"Ooh, what did you write? I want to read it!" Violet asked cheerfully.

Mercifully, the bus pulled up at that moment. The crowds of chattering children rushed onto it, definitely not single file.

The bus driver, a tall African American lady, stood up and yelled, "It's not that hard! One at a time! ONE AT A TIME!" she bellowed as two boys managed to squeeze themselves on simultaneously.

"Yikes. She scares me a little," Violet whispered, her eyes glittering with laughter as the two boys mumbled apologies.

"But I get why she's yelling," I pointed out. Three giggling girls that had been popular at my middle school grabbed each other's identical bookbags as to not be separated from each other, chattering madly.

"Come on," I motioned to Violet, and we pushed our way through the crowd and found seats next to each other on the bus.

We chatted the whole ride about how much we thought high school would be different from middle. At one point, I pulled up music on my phone. Violet's eyes went wide when her favorite song came on, and she belted it out for the whole bus to hear. A few whispers and stares were directed her way, but she ignored them.

I laughed and joined in, turned up the music, and soon most of the bus was singing the words,...you are mine, forever and always, forever and always, you are. A peppy beat kicked in near the end, and I even saw the bus driver tapping her foot.

I grinned so wide I thought my mouth would break. High school was off to a great start.

And then I noticed something that made my singing stutter and my blood run cold.

Jai was sitting two seats in front of us, and on the opposite row.

So he had a perfect look at me as he sang the words to the song emotionlessly, his eyes affixed on my face. His perfect light brown hair swayed to the rhythm of the bus, and his deep, dark blue eyes gave nothing away.

My words sputtered to a halt, and then the song ended. I quickly paused my music and shoved my phone in my backpack, trying not to look at Jai and failing miserably.

"What's wrong?" Violet whispered, then she followed my gaze. She giggled. "Ooh, he's a cutie."

"No, he's not," I said quickly.

Violet gave me a shrug. "Then I call dibs."

"Trust me, you do not want to date that guy," I told her, wincing a little. "He's a real jerk."

"He doesn't look jerky," Violet said dreamily, giving Jai a little wave.

"Oh-kay," I sighed, hoping that her hopeless crush wouldn't go anywhere.

The bus screeched to a stop in front of the school, punctuating my words. Immediately everyone stood up and flowed out. "Agh!" I yelled, losing Violet as I was swept along in the crowd.

I heard her voice faintly from our seat, "Have a great first day, Cam!"

I was carried down the steps and thrust forcefully onto the walkway. Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors alike spilled out from buses all around me, all pushing, pulling, racing, and doing everything in their power to get to the front door. I checked my watch. 7:00 on the dot. There were still ten minutes until the bell rang, but everyone was acting like there were less than thirty seconds.

A short girl pushed past me, her red hair bobbing and her bright neon green bookbag standing out in the array of mostly dull colors. It seemed the ever-flowing rainbow of backpacks that I'd gotten used to in middle school had been quelled because of the worries about other's opinions. But I still proudly sported the bright aqua bookbag that I'd had since fifth grade.

A bell rang, making me jump. But I soon realized it was just the bell marking the time when the academic halls were opened. I pulled my schedule out of my pocket. My first period was on the... ugh. Third floor. Room 3011.

I gave a sigh, then raced through the door like a girl on a mission. Then I laughed to myself. I was, in fact, a girl on a mission.

But nobody could know that. Nobody could ever know that.

Immediately I stepped into the school and stopped stone-still. A huge common room sat before me. The walls were all green and blue, the West Oliver Paige school colors. A huge dolphin, the school's mascot, leaped across the wall in a spray of blue paint. The ceiling was low, and I could hear the thumps of feet above me. That seemed structurally unsafe, but who was I to judge?

Three halls branched out of the main room I'd found myself in. "Ugh," I groaned. I walked mindlessly towards the first hall. Then my heart leaped as I looked to the left. Stairs! I quickly made a U-turn and plodded upwards, avoiding the people running all around me.

Another bell rang. What was it for this time? Bells sounded weird at this school, not like at the middle school. So many changes already. I was so overwhelmed.

I hoisted my bookbag further up on my shoulders, and pushed through a mass of people, finally reaching the second floor. The walls were painted red on this floor. A sign pointed towards a small hallway, proclaiming, "3000's." I headed towards it.

"Hey, Cam!" a friend from last year waved at me. I waved back, but then the crowds pushed me towards the 3200's hallway. No, I didn't want to go there! I struggled against the flood, pushing across the sea of lockers and faces.

Yet another bell rang. I tried to check my watch, but someone bumped into me, hard, sending me stumbling and sprawling to the ground. Nobody even glanced my way.

I steamed, blushing and slowly standing up and brushing myself off.

And then suddenly, Lukas was there, his hand extended towards mine, his green eyes sparkling with concern. My heart swelled at his kindness.

His light brown hair bounced. "Hey, Cam. Need a little help?"

### Chapter Four

"I wouldn't mind it," I groaned, taking his hand and pulling myself the rest of the way up. A few snickers rose from the couple of people watching, but I didn't care. "What's your first class?"

"Same as yours," Lukas told me with a smile, not letting go of my hand as he pulled me towards the hallway that we needed to go down. Then he lowered his voice a little. "Did the Agents get in touch with you about the... chess club?"

"Yes," I said quietly. "Are you going to the meeting after school?"

"Wouldn't miss it. Have you seen any other Agents yet today?"

"Nope. But it's a big school."

Yet another bell rang. This one sounded different. Lukas pulled me faster. "Warning bell, we've got a minute to go." He broke into a jog, and I jogged alongside him.

We made a right turn and headed down a hallway with classes on every side, starting with 3001. "Ugh. Our class is at the very end of the hallway," I said exasperatedly, speeding up a tiny bit.

Lukas was right alongside me, still holding my hand tight, as we sped down the red hallway. Only a few other stragglers were in the hallway now. As we passed, they gave nods to their fellow slackers.

And then, the late bell rang. My heart sunk. "It's okay, Cam, it's the first day, they won't be giving tardies," Lukas comforted as we finally reached room 3011, letting go of my hand to pull open the doorknob.

The room was painted neon orange. I blinked a few times before my eyes adjusted. The entire class stared at me and Lukas.

The teacher, a young man who was wearing a tie-dye shirt and sporting long blonde hair gave us nods. "Welcome, dude and dudette, to Creative Writing. Take a seat wherever you want."

Lukas looked at me and shrugged. We chose two seats near the back of the classroom, next to a boy who looked like he was already asleep and a girl who was currently taking out a small, sleek laptop. A colorful array of pens sat on her desk and I felt the sudden urge to knock them all to the floor just to see the rainbow of colors spill away.

"The first thing we'll do today is introductions. Let's have everyone introduce themselves and say what animal they would be, if they were an animal," the hippie-looking teacher said. "My name is Mr. Ender."

"As in dragon?" the boy next to me who I thought was asleep suddenly mumbled, burrowing deeper into his black sweatshirt. I jumped, then gave Lukas a glance at the same time he turned to give one to me.

The teacher didn't seem to hear. "Let's have you start," he said, pointing to the rainbow-pen girl.

She flipped her perfect blonde hair out of her face. "Okay. So like, I would be, like a butterfly, because I'm like, so social," she said confidently, chewing on a huge wad of gum.

I raised my eyebrows.

"And your name is?" Mr. Ender asked.

"Like, Sophie," she said with a particularly loud smack of her gum.

"Ew," the formerly asleep boy who'd made the dragon comment muttered.

I tended to agree with him on that one. Sophie immediately reminded me of a bully that had been horrible to my best friend Stella when she'd first moved from Italy about a year and a half ago. I didn't want to judge a book (or person) by its cover, but I could pretty much already tell Sophie and I were not going to get along.

Mr. Ender moved on to the next person, but Sophie leaned over from her place to the right of me and whispered, "Like, I saw you holding hands with that cute guy in the hallway. Are you like, his girlfriend?"

I felt my face heating up.

Lukas looked over at that moment. "This girl bothering you, Cam?" His face was stony and angry and I felt lucky that he was on my side.

Sophie smacked her gum. "Oh, no biggie," she said flirtatiously. "I was just asking her if a cutie like you was taken."

"Yep. Definitely taken," Lukas affirmed, rolling his eyes at me like who-does-this-girl-think-she-is?

"Fine then," Sophie answered with a shrug. She rolled her blue eyes right back.

My eyes scanned the classroom as I worked to ignore Sophie. Then my eyes locked onto Asher. He was in the far corner, his sandy hair tousled and his deep, dark blue eyes boring into mine. I quickly looked away.

Asher was Shardstorm's son, and therefore Jai's brother. He had betrayed us to go work for Shardstorm after training to be an STPOW Agent for a while. I kept a close eye on him, but the rest of the class flew by, and Asher didn't do anything even remotely suspicious. Creative Writing was interesting, and I could tell that this was one class that I'd really enjoy.

At the end of the class, Mr. Ender assigned us a little homework. "I want you to think of all your friends as animals, and write down a brief explanation of why." Simple enough. And it could be fun!

The bell rang, a jarring sound. I jumped up from my chair and shoved everything in my bookbag. Lukas waited for me by his desk. "What class do you have now?" he asked, looking calmingly into my eyes.

"World History Honors." I sighed. "With Jai."

Lukas put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "You'll be okay. Just remember to watch him very, very closely."

I didn't need any reminding of that.

My next class was on the second floor. I waved goodbye to Lukas and raced to the stairs I'd used to get up to this floor. I took them down two at a time, my sneakers thudding on the concrete. My bookbag bounced on my back, and my lunchbox swung from my hand as I maneuvered around the hordes of people all racing to make it to their class on time just like I was.

I threw open the heavy stairwell doors and raced into the hallway, sprinting down towards room 2302. I heard footsteps thudding beside me, and I glanced to my right.

To my horror, Jai was right beside me, keeping pace with me.

He gave me a charming smile. "Hey, Cam. I heard we have some classes together. I've managed to have us sit next to each other in both! How exciting."

I rolled my eyes, acting annoyed, but I was secretly relieved. This would give me a chance to interrogate and observe him further. I decided not to say anything about the extra unidentified trainee yet. Maybe I could watch Jai closely enough to find out on my own, and if Jai knew I knew something, then his guard would be up automatically.

"Don't pretend like you're clueless, Cam," Jai came up close to me and whispered in my ear. I jerked away, reaching the room and opening the door quickly.

Jai followed right behind, and leaned up to whisper another ominous sentence in my ear.

"I know you know that there's another apprentice here."

"Apprentice?" I snorted, trying to hide the chills I felt cross my body. "Is that what you're calling trainees now?"

I quickly looked around the room to give myself an excuse to break away from those piercing blue eyes. The walls were a deep, dark blue, and posters with quotes hung all around the walls and tables. The beige floor was dusty after a long summer of nonuse.

"Apprentices and masters," Jai murmured. "There always must be a master."

I veered away towards my assigned seat. "Okay, creep. Anyway, just leave me and my friends alone. We're sick of your drama and we're sick of..." I lowered my voice as a boy glanced at me curiously, "Shardstorm getting in our way."

Agent Semaj chose that moment to walk out of a small teacher workroom, his arms laden with large workbooks. He gave me a significant glance so quick I almost missed it. "Good morning, class. My name is Mr. James." He wrote it on the board, balancing the workbooks on his other hand and arm. "A couple reminders before we begin."

He began to pass out the workbooks to each student. I noticed Violet across the room. I caught her eye and waved. She grinned back at me.

Agent Semaj slipped me a workbook with a teacherlike smile that I returned. Jai, however, who was sitting to my left, got no smile and his workbook was slapped a bit harshly on the table. I casually glanced at Agent Semaj's leg. Still a limp from where Jai had shot him a few weeks ago.

"Don't forget, right after this class, you have lunch," Agent Semaj continued. I flipped open my workbook and pretended to write my name in it, while actually taking the small note that Agent Semaj had left inside as I had suspected he would have.

I scanned it hastily.

Do NOT provoke Jai or let him know your true purpose here. Destroy this note.

I crumpled the note in my hand quickly and quietly. I felt a tingling, then a warm burn. When I opened my hand, there was not even a trace of the note that had once been.

Spy equipment was awesome.

But my heart sunk a bit at the note's contents. Jai did already know part of my true purpose here, though it wasn't my fault, seeing as there was no way I could have possibly revealed it in the thirty-second interaction I'd had with him thus far.

"We're going to begin with a review on fractions," Agent Semaj told the class. Ugh. I hated fractions.

The class dragged on and on. I watched Jai carefully but discreetly for most of it, except for when we were actively doing problems in the workbook.

Finally, the bell rang. I jumped up and sped out of the classroom before Jai could even get near me.

Violet caught up with me outside, her face a little red from jogging to catch up. "Hey Cam, uh, can I eat lunch with you today?"

"Definitely," I said with a grin. "Let me text my friends and find out where we're meeting."

I pulled out my phone and typed a message on the chat that included Lukas, Stella, Emmi, Marlee, and Aury that was so cleverly named, "Friends."

Hey all. Where are we meeting for lunch?

I subtly checked my spy watch. Any STPOW related messages would show up there, but the newest one was from Agent Rivers three hours ago.

Don't forget, chess club after school.

An extraordinarily loud ping sounded from my phone. I quickly silenced it and gave the people around me an apologetic glance. Violet giggled.

The gym, a message from Stella showed, like we decided yesterday. Is high school frying your brain already? My phone vibrated. Stella sent a tongue sticking out emoji. Then Lukas sent a thumbs up. A few seconds later, Aury sent one.

"We're meeting at the gym," I said decisively, sending a smiley face emoji back and starting to walk again. I glanced to my side. Violet was there, her bright pink bookbag bouncing. She nodded happily.

The gym was down a flight of stairs, but it was easy to find once we emerged near the cafeteria. A huge sign proclaiming, "MAIN GYM," hung from the ceiling. And there were my fellow STPOW Agents. Lukas saw me first and gave me a gigantic grin.

Then Stella noticed me. She ran up to me, her light blonde hair swinging and her light green eyes sparkling. She smirked. "We literally had a forty-five-minute text conversation yesterday about where to eat lunch and you forgot?" Then she wrapped me in a hug. "How's high school, girl?"

If Stella was an animal, she'd probably be... a dolphin. As soon as my mind settled on it, I knew it was right. Stella was playful and fun, but had a sassy and stubborn streak. Maybe it was the Italian blood flowing through her veins, maybe it was the fact that she'd been burned before by friends and needed to keep her guard up.

Or maybe it was just the fact that she was Stella that made her so hilarious, loyal, sassy, stubborn, and playful. Either way, she was the best bestie I could ask for.

I released Stella. "High school is pretty great."

What a lie. High school had pretty much been a disaster so far. But at least I had Stella in my math class next period. We could conquer Jai together. "How about you?"

"You know. Just the usual. Jai's in my first period," she told me with a significant glance. "What a butthead."

"Hey, isn't that the hot guy that was checking you out on the bus?" Violet broke in.

Stella raised her eyebrows at me as I spluttered, "I already told you, he's a jerk."

Emmi came up slowly with a shy grin. Her dark braids clacked and her smooth, chocolate eyes and skin shone. Huh, what animal would Emmi be? Maybe a fawn. She seemed so sweet and delicate and shy, and she tended to race away whenever too many people approached. But Emmi had a secret. She was actually a top-notch android created by Shardstorm himself to use in his attempt to take over the world. But we'd destroyed the technology necessary to do this, and now Emmi was just a very lifelike, very sweet, very tough-on-the-inside robot.

"You okay, Cam? You seem sad," burst in Marlee, sauntering up from the side of us. Her wavy bubblegum-pink hair and bright hazel eyes attracted the eyes of everyone who passed her, but she didn't care at all.

I thought for a moment, then I landed on Marlee's animal. A butterfly. A true butterfly, unlike the snobby Sophie. She was bright and peppy and perpetually happy, but she wasn't very good with emotional drama. She preferred to head it off before it came. Were butterflies good with emotional drama? I doubted it. Their wings would be ruined by the tears.

Marlee plopped down on the ground and begun to eat a sandwich. I followed her example and slid down the wall until I was sitting. I pulled out my lunch and smiled. Ham and cheese sandwich. Finally, something was going right.

"I'm fine, Marlee." I gave a big smile to show I was telling the truth. "Thanks, though," I added, taking a giant bite of my sandwich.

Lukas came up and sat down beside me, giving me a smile as he put his arm around me. I scooted closer to his beautiful green eyes and light brown hair. "That looks good, Cammy." He teasingly pretended to take a bite.

Hm. What animal was Lukas? Maybe a wolf. He was calm and calculating and mysterious, yet he looked out for those in need and was funny and caring.

Then the name Agent Wolf flashed through my head. Chills ran through my body as I remembered the resurrected villain. Lukas couldn't be a wolf...

Maybe an owl, then. He was smart and kind but still independent and a little shy.

And the newest of my STPOW friends (or of the 'dream team' as Stella jokingly called it) Aury, came up and sat in the middle of us all. She was a short girl, with round pink glasses and blue eyes. She pulled her (somehow still tangled) dirty-blonde hair with dyed-green tips into a loose ponytail as she pulled out her tofu and grapes.

I stuck out my tongue a little. "Tofu? Is that really good?"

Aury shrugged, pulling out a teal notebook. "I'm currently conducting a study: why do people immediately get grossed out when they think about tofu. Can you be one of my test subjects?"

I laughed to myself as I immediately realized Aury's spirit animal: a cat. She liked to take life at her own pace, and was confident, intelligent, and loved math and science. Aury was constantly writing and conducting studies and intense equations inside her notebook, and though she could be shy and slow-moving, she was immensely curious and she adored friendship and stimulation.

I loved Aury's little quirks and her funny personality. Even though she had been working for the enemy for a while, and her mother was Darkblaze (Shardstorm's second in command), she was only there because she was too terrified to run away because of what she thought her mother would do to her. It would be rare to find a person more dedicated to the cause of ridding the world of evil than Aury.

I looked around at my friends, my dream team, and I grinned, knowing that high school might be rough, but at least I was lucky enough to have these people in my life to help me get through it.

And then Jai came and ruined it all.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and I determinedly ignored him, hoping that if I didn't acknowledge his presence, he'd go away. But no such luck.

Jai sauntered up to me and sat down, smoothly sliding in between Lukas's arm and my shoulders. Lukas gave him a glare, trying to scoot back towards me, but Jai moved his jacket just enough that I could see the telltale bulge of a gun (stun or otherwise) under it.

I was almost certain that unless Jai had wanted us to see the gun, we would not have noticed it.

"How the crap did he get that into school?" whispered Stella.

Lukas backed off immediately.

"So, Cam," Jai purred, his voice oozing sticky sweetness. I worked hard to remind myself that this was the boy who'd murdered Taylor, tried to kill me at least three or four times, shot Agent Semaj, and was working for Shardstorm, for gosh sakes.

Wasn't that motivation enough to hate him?

"So?" I said in what I hoped was a cold voice. All of my fellow STPOW Agents were giving me meaningful looks with their eyes, as to say, Get the information, Cam. Cam. Cam, he's right there! Interrogate him, now!

I'm going to, I glared back. Then I turned to Jai. "Found anyone else to annoy yet other than me?"

Jai turned and gave a meaningful, almost flirtatious glance to Violet, who was watching uncertainly from the outside of our little STPOW circle. She gave a sweet sugary smile back.

I tried to warn her with my eyes, I warned you this dude was trouble. It's not too late to back out.

"Yes, I think so," Jai said softly, "but Vivi doesn't think of it as annoying, do you, Vivi?"

Stella pretended to retch into her leftover noodles. Vivi? she mouthed to me.

"Leave us alone, Jai," I growled, shoving a grape in my mouth with unwarranted rage. The grape hadn't done anything to deserve my wrath. But it's not like I could take my anger out on Jai.

At least, not yet.

### Chapter Five

The bell rang, jolting us all, and marking the halfway point of lunch. Jai gave me a mock wave and left. Violet glanced fleetingly at us before gathering her stuff and running to catch up with him.

I groaned. "She does not know what she's getting into, flirting with him."

Then I noticed all of my fellow Agents were staring at me. "What?"

"He was right there, and instead of stalling so that one of us could search his things, or trying to make him slip up and reveal something, you told him to leave?" Stella groaned. "Cam, do you not remember any of our training?"

I felt my face heating up, my freckles turning bright red and my chocolate eyes flickering nervously. "I'm sorry. I'll do better."

When Jai was around, my only thought was to get him away from me, and now that he was gone, all I wanted was for him to come back so I could prove myself.

Lukas put an arm on my shoulder protectively and comfortingly. "Hey, Cammy, it's only the first day. I'm sure you'll be doing great soon."

Aury broke in matter-of-factly, "Emmi's already overheard Asher and Jai talking about the device Shardstorm's building and saying something about traveling with it, so now we can use that piece of info. I've recovered a partial map of Shardstorm's headquarters including the room where the device is located. Stella, Lukas, and Marlee have at least been interrogating Jai and Asher in the classes they have with them, instead of pushing them away."

"Hey, she's already said she'll do better!" Lukas jumped in, a little annoyance in his voice.

"I can't help being better at everything. It's just the way I'm programmed, with super-sensing and hearing. Cam's doing fine," Emmi broke in quietly.

"I think she should be making a little more of an effort, though. We've got to think of the mission over our own... feelings," Stella put in, a slight edge in her voice at the end.

"Is there something I'm missing?" Aury raised her eyebrows, jotting something down in her notebook. "Was there perhaps something more than friendship going on between these two mortal enemies at one point or another?"

"Before I knew he was a murdering, lying, cheating jerk, yes! And I'm not ashamed because I didn't know and I couldn't help it!" I was almost yelling now, attracting a few glances from passersbys.

I lowered my voice, narrowing my eyes at my best friend. "And ask Stella about her connection to Jai. Now that's a story," I snarled. Jai and Stella had been dating, and he'd dumped her to try to go out with me. "Why don't you tell them, Stella, if you're so perfect?"

"You jerk," Stella said softly.

"Don't you freaking call her a jerk," Lukas growled.

"I wouldn't if she didn't deserve it." I stood up, fury making my blood boil. "So why don't you just stay out of it, Lukas?"

"Look, we already said it was okay. Everyone needs to calm down," Emmi said, our voices rising.

"Now don't you get involved, Miss. Perfect Android." I regretted the words right after I said them, but it was too late to take them back now.

"You guys are ruining my study about strong teen friendships through high school." Aury shook her head.

"Everyone, take three deep breaths," Lukas said, the first to realize we'd gone too far.

But I wasn't taking any breaths. "No. I can't have you guys turn against me. What if that's why Jai came here? What if that's what he wants!?"

"I hate to break it to you, Cam, but not everything is about you!" Stella growled.

And suddenly Marlee took a deep breath and opened her mouth.

"IF TAYLOR WAS HERE, SHE'D BE YELLING AT YOU ALL TO SHUT UP!"

Silence for a moment.

A few people looked our way, but we ignored them and they looked away.

Marlee's yell had the intended result, though. The argument stopped. Lukas, Emmi, Stella, Aury and I turned out heads sheepishly to Marlee. We knew she'd hated emotional drama, and yet we'd still selfishly continued our argument.

And she was right about the Taylor part. Taylor had died in the bomb that was meant to kill the President. She'd been... strong-willed. She would have definitely shouted at us long before Marlee had.

"Sorry, Marls," I said apologetically, taking a deep breath and sitting down, trying to calm my shaking limbs. "I guess we got a little out of control."

"Yeah, we did," Stella sighed. She lowered her voice, making sure nobody was around to overhear. "And I'm sorry, Cam, too. I guess I'm a little more caught up in this mission since it's only my second official one as an STPOW Agent."

Lukas and Marlee gave murmurs of consent and agreement.

I nodded too. This was my fourth mission, after the President Plot, infiltrating Shardstorm's headquarters with Emmi, and going back to stop the Android Attack.

This was the most casual one yet, though. I needed to remember to keep my head in the game. Maybe I wasn't the leader of this mission (I actually wouldn't know if I was or not until the meeting after school today) but I still was an important contributor, and I needed to start acting like it.

"Okay," I mustered up all my remaining pride and composure. "You are all coming to the STPOW... ah... chess club meeting after school, right?"

Everyone nodded, looking down, still a little tension in the air.

"Then I will have some information for you guys then," I promised.

But as the bell rang and we all dispersed, I wasn't feeling too hopeful.

My third period, science, was so boring it seemed to drag on and on, but Jai was completely a model student for the entire time. He did nothing suspicious at all. Stella agreed with me on that, though.

Science was really boring, and we got a lot of homework. But at least it was on the first floor.

Fourth period, Asher was the same. Perfect. Agent Rivers taught that class, and she confided in me after class she hadn't noticed anything either.

By the time the final bell rang at the end of the day, I was thoroughly exasperated. It was almost like Jai and Asher were intentionally trying to keep me from getting any information, and feeding it out to the other young Agents.

But I reminded myself that although I did need to be trying my hardest to get information, this wasn't a one-girl mission. And Stella was right about one thing in our argument—it wasn't all about me. I was sure the others had gotten some useful data.

As I was walking around towards the front of the school, it suddenly dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea where the entrance to the secret underground headquarters were. I looked all around, hoping to see a fellow Agent, but only unfamiliar faces flowed past my field of vision.

And then I walked past the auditorium and stopped stone-still.

Why wouldn't the STPOW put the entrance in the same place as in the middle school?

Ignoring the annoyed glances I'd gotten for so abruptly pausing, I changed course and flung open the heavy auditorium doors.

The room was silent and still. Suspense seemed to hang in the air as I walked down the left aisle, whispering, "Eighth seat ninth row middle section..." Somehow, even four months later, I remembered. I still remembered.

I counted the rows. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine rows. I began to walk down the narrow rows between the seats and the chairs. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight. Eight seats.

I began to sit down, but then suddenly the doors to the auditorium clanged open. The school janitor walked in, whistling. My heart jumped and I almost screamed, but I managed to crouch quickly instead, hiding myself from view.

The janitor came closer with his broom, sweeping methodically back and forth. I was now almost on the floor, my short hair brushing the dirty auditorium floor. The broom was sweeping ever closer, and I knew he'd soon spot me. And when he asked for an explanation, I wouldn't have one.

So, I did something rather stupid and impulsive.

I stood up quickly and lowered myself into the chair.

The janitor had just enough time to say, "Hey, you—" before I felt my stomach drop and the floor disappear out from under me.

Thank the Lord they had put the entrance in the same place as the middle school. I plummeted downwards, smooth, metallic walls flashing around me. I felt a twinge of sadness as I remembered that the last time that this had happened, Stella had been beside me, falling and laughing hysterically while screaming in unison with me.

I almost imagined I could hear her scream, but it didn't sound like her, it sounded like her scream mixed with the scream of an older man.

Wait.

That wasn't my imagination, I definitely heard a yell from above me.

I looked upwards and almost shouted myself. There was Stella, falling downwards at the same time as (oh, crap) the janitor. I guessed I should have been a little more careful about making sure the hole above my head was closed.

Stella chose that time to look down and notice me. "Cam! Why is there a janitor here?" she yelled, attempting to send her voice downward towards me.

"My fault," I said quietly.

"What??"

"MY FAULT!"

"SORRY, CAN'T HEAR YOU!" screamed Stella.

We started to fall faster. Lights flickered on all around us, lighting up the cold, gray, metallic walls. I looked downwards, and saw a landing pad not unlike the one I'd landed on in the first time I'd ever gone to meet the STPOW. In what seemed like no time it all, we landed, but the soft pillow cushioned our fall where I could barely feel the impact. It folded around me, holding me in its clutches, and it was with great regret that I rolled to the edge and hopped off.

Stella winced, holding her back and dragging her bookbag off the landing pad with her. "Yikes. Tip: Don't bring a laptop to school any day you want to go falling down an extremely long tunnel and land with it directly underneath you."

In all the excitement, I'd left my bookbag up in the auditorium. I had to remember to go get that afterwards. But at least I didn't have to feel Stella's pain, though I groaned on her behalf. "Poor Stells."

Stella recovered quickly, hoisting her neon green bookbag onto her shoulders. "Hey, what are we going to do with that janitor?"

The janitor was lying, stunned, on the pillow. I felt my face flush. "Let's ask the Agents once we get to them. Probably they'll use that memory-wiping serum we used on the kids that witnessed the blowing up of the White House."

The janitor was sitting up now, and pulling off his hat to reveal... a shock of red hair?

He grinned at me. It was a very familiar grin, and I moaned as I realized my stupidity.

"Agent Semaj."

"That's me," Agent Semaj responded cheerily, taking out a wet towel and wiping the disguise makeup off his face.

"Okay, the next time you want to pull an epic prank, jump out from behind a wall or put a whoopee cushion on someone's chair or something, don't pretend to be a freaking janitor!" Stella gasped, a little annoyance working its way into her voice. She clutched her heart. "I didn't know fourteen-year-olds could have heart attacks, but I think I about had one just there."

"It wasn't a prank," Agent Semaj told us more seriously. "It was an assessment."

But whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by the earsplitting screams heard from above his head.

Agent Semaj glanced upwards, surprised. "Oh, look. The other Agents are here."

Quick as a flash, he backflipped off the landing pad and casually landed on his feet just as Aury, Marlee, Lukas, and Emmi plummeted into the cushy pillow.

"What do you mean, an assessment?" spluttered Stella, still stuck on that.

I, however, raced towards the landing pad to help untangle Lukas and Marlee. Agent Semaj strode over himself to assist.

Lukas's face was bright red when we'd finally got him disconnected from the other mass of limbs around him. "That was very uncomfortable, and not just physically," he gasped. "I think that pillow is only made for one or two people at a time."

"Agreed," I steamed, unrighteous anger that Marlee had gotten so close to my kind-of boyfriend making me fume.

Lukas took my hand of assistance to get off the landing pad, and didn't let it go once we all began walking down the dark tunnel that awaited us.

"So, back to that assessment thing..." prompted Stella. I realized then that she was a lot more nervous about this mission than she'd led us to believe.

"Oh yes," Agent Semaj spoke up. It was still odd to see him in janitor's attire, with a dark green pocketed shirt with matching pants and old tennis shoes. "The assessment."

He paused for a moment. Our feet thudded against the cool metal as we continued down the dimly lit tunnel.

"Cam failed it," he admitted.

"WHAT?" I shouted, fear coursing through my veins. "Does that mean I'm kicked out of the STPOW? Are you going to wipe my memory?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Agent Semaj told me a little harshly. I raised my eyebrows, surprised at his tone, and squeezed Lukas's hand a little tighter.

"You're not even kicked off the mission. You just can't go on any special missions we have relating to this one, like missions to Shardstorm's headquarters or such," Agent Semaj told me matter-of-factly.

I kept walking, but I felt sadness well up in my throat. A tear trickled down my cheek. There went the memories I'd make this mission, the pride I'd feel after completing it successfully. Agent Semaj had taken away most of what it meant to be a member of the STPOW.

Lukas wiped the tear away gently then gave Agent Semaj a glare. "That's ridiculous. Just because the fake janitor was able to make it to the landing pad doesn't mean anything," Lukas argued.

"If that was an enemy agent disguised to infiltrate our headquarters, it would mean everything," Agent Semaj said gravely.

Silence. The other girls conversation from behind us even ceased. Our feet still thudded on the ground through it all. Thud, thud. A torch flickered.

"Anyway, it's a bit of a long walk. I have STPOW business to work on, but I'll tell you when we're close," Agent Semaj told us with a nod, striding up ahead and pulling out a cleverly concealed walkie-talkie.

Lukas and I stopped to wait for the girls to catch up.

"Wow," Stella scoffed once they'd caught up and we'd started walking again. "That's an incredibly stupid reason to take away someone's special mission privileges."

"Shhh!" Emmi said diplomatically. "Let's not talk bad about other people, okay?"

"I'm not talking bad about them, I'm just saying they're stupid," Stella told us cheerfully. "There's a big difference."

"Carry the four, subtract forty-two..." mumbled Aury.

"Hey, Aury, hidden in anyone's closet lately?" Marlee joked. That had been the place I'd first met Aury, in my closet at Shardstorm's headquarters when I was briefly training there. She was working on an equation even then.

"Ugh," I groaned a little, my mind drawn back to the problem at hand. I glimpsed Agent Semaj's walkie-talkie in his right hand before it disappeared from my view again. "Do you think I can convince him to let me back into any special missions if I do really well tomorrow?"

Lukas swung our hands absent-mindedly. "Maybe. He should let you. Extra credit or something."

Suddenly I felt an unexplained rush of anger. Lukas was holding my hand, comforting me, and he still couldn't find the bravery to just ask me out? It was really not that hard. All he had to say were the words, 'Do you want to be my girlfriend?'

Stella then noticed Lukas's hand in mine. With a sly smirk on her face, she grabbed Aury's hand. Aury dropped her pen and looked up, a little stunned, but then Stella grasped Marlee's hand and Marlee grinned and took Emmi's. Like they had planned it, Stella and Marlee bellowed, "FRIES BEFORE GUYS!"

"And friends before guys," Emmi said softly but with a smile.

"And also math before guys," Aury mumbled. "Add the three, divide by the positive variable..."

I gave Lukas a glance. "Do you mind if..." There would be a time for romance, but right now was the time for friendship.

Lukas smiled. "Go ahead."

I yanked my hand from Lukas's and rushed over, linking my arm on Emmi's. "So, let's have girl-talk, girls," I said with a giggle, feeling like a big girly-girl and not minding it at all.

"Ooh, okay. Which boys do you think are hot?" Marlee jumped right in.

"Boys that like equations," Aury muttered. "Subtract the two, multiply by the reciprocal and flip the inequality..."

"We-ell, there's a real cutie in my science class," Stella told us dreamily. "He said hi to me today." Her green eyes glittered.

"Boys that are kind and sweet," Emmi spoke up quietly.

"Boys that are—" I started, but Stella interrupted me. "Nu-uh! No playing this game if you're already sort-of dating someone."

I wanted so bad to look back at Lukas to see his face, but I refrained. "I was going to say, I like cute STPOW Agent boys named Lukas," I amended from my original plan.

"AWWWWWW," screeched Marlee and Stella.

"How disgustingly cute!" Marlee told me with a laugh.

"How... just plain disgusting!" Stella teased.

"That's so sweet!" Emmi spoke up with a smile.

"Carry the ten," Aury said loudly.

We passed the rest of the time like this, girl-talking and feeling like normal teenage girls that didn't have to worry about the fate of the world resting on their shoulders.

But that short break didn't change the fact that it was. The fate of the world was pretty much on our shoulders.

Luckily, I had such good friends that could help me forget about it for a while.

### Chapter Six

Finally, we reached the end of the tunnel. A single rotten, old wooden door lay before us. Agent Semaj took out a key and fitted it into the lock. My mind flashed to the pocketknife with the lock-picker Stella had given me the day I first learned about the STPOW and I grinned at her just as she turned to grin at me.

"This meeting needs to be brief, because there is much urgent business to attend to, especially for senior agents like myself and Agent Rivers," Agent Semaj spoke up, his voice cutting through the silence.

"Works for me. I have way too much homework," Stella grumbled. "And a lot of it's from you, Agent Semaj."

He cracked a smile. "Got to keep up my reputation as a strict teacher."

"Isn't Agent Rivers supposed to be the strict one?" Marlee teased.

The rotting wooden door burst open and Agent Rivers strode out. "That would be me."

"Agent Rivers!" Marlee stuttered. "Well, you're not that strict, you're just a little... terrifying."

Agent Rivers gave us a rare smile. "I work hard to uphold that image." Then she whirled around. "Let's go. Time's a-wasting."

We entered into a small room with a ladder. At the top was a small conference room, with another door leading out from it. But we didn't head to the door. Agent Semaj and Rivers plopped right down next to each other on one of the dark gray squishy couches. I was reminded of the engagement ring on Agent Rivers' finger as they giggled.

Stella and Marlee perched on the arms of an ice-blue recliner, while Emmi and Aury took the other couch. I grabbed a seat on the other recliner, this one dark gray, with Lukas. There wasn't much room, but it was okay.

"So. This is a quick meeting. You already have your assignments, we just want to keep up with your progress," Agent Rivers started. "Agent Star, let's have you report first."

"Well, I interrogated Jai in my math class, but the only thing I learned was that Shardstorm is planning on recruiting a lot more trainees, some from our high school," Stella said quickly.

Agent Rivers nodded. "Good work. Agent X?" Aury began to speak.

And on it went, each Agent having better and better information to share than the last. And finally, Agent Rivers reached me. "And last but not least, Agent Hope?"

I felt myself blushing. "I... don't have anything to share."

Agent Rivers and Agent Semaj shared a quick look. "It's only the first day," comforted Agent Semaj. "But try to really take initiative tomorrow. We put you in a lot of the enemy's classes for a reason, because we know you can handle it. Try to prove us right, okay?"

"Okay," I whispered.

"In other news, the leader for this mission will be Stella," Agent Rivers said casually.

A beat passed.

"Me?" Stella spluttered. "Why not Cam? Or Emmi? Or pretty much anyone else?"

"You're bright, bold, confident, and you've already discovered useful data," Agent Semaj listed. "You're going to do fine."

My heart sunk, but I forced a smile onto my face even as envy laced through my bones. "That's great, Stells! You'll do awesome!"

Stella instantly looked calmer. "You really think so?"

"I know so."

"Well okay then," Stella amended. "I'll accept the role of leader."

Agent Semaj beamed. "Wonderful. Meeting adjourned."

And just like that, we were done.

Agent Semaj sent us through the other door that we hadn't been in yet. A smaller hallway than their main quarters awaited us. Doors dotted the sides, in all the possible hues I could imagine. But there were less doors than underneath my middle school.

Still, it was surprising. "Do you guys have headquarters under every school in the county?" I laughed.

"Nope, just the West Oliver Paige schools," Agent Semaj told me with a grin. "Now if I can just get you to step into this elevator right here."

Stella, Emmi, Aury, Lukas, Marlee and I piled in. The walls were shiny ice-blue. Multiple small lights gave the elevator the impression of a very small, very dimly lit cave.

"No meeting after school tomorrow, but check your watches for updates!" Agent Semaj reminded us as Agent Rivers keyed in a code and the dark gray doors squeaked shut.

The elevator lurched, then started to smoothly rise. I was crowded between Lukas and Marlee, and I felt like an embarrassed pancake.

"So," Marlee tried to make conversation. "Congrats on the role of leader, Stella!"

Murmurs of agreement rose through the elevator, then silence settled upon us again. I shifted a little so that my elbow wasn't in Marlee's stomach.

Then I turned to look at Lukas. I didn't expect him to be so close. I could see every speck in his green-flecked eyes, every little tiny freckle on his face.

We stared into each other's eyes for a moment, and then he laughed a little and the moment was over. "I don't think this elevator was meant for six people."

"Me neither."

The elevator finally creaked to a halt. Wow, the STPOW headquarters really were pretty far underground. With a ding, the doors creaked open. We all spilled out, taking deep breaths of slightly stale janitor's closet air... I looked around and realized we were in fact in a janitor's closet. The STPOW elevator had led there just like in our middle school.

"It stinks in here," Marlee coughed, breaking the silence.

"It's a janitor's closet, what do you expect?" teased Stella.

"Maybe she expected a good-smelling janitor's closet," Emmi said thoughtfully.

I nudged Emmi. She still didn't quite understand humor, what with her android brain and all. "That was supposed to be funny, Em."

Lukas laughed, walking towards the door and opening it. He mock-bowed to me. "After you, milady."

We filed out into the darkened and shadowed school.

"Hey guys, wanna come over for a while?" I asked as we headed towards the main doors. Then I remembered my bookbag, still in the auditorium. Luckily it was close to the exit.

"I can't. I have soccer in thirty minutes," Marlee told me regretfully, checking her watch.

"I really do have a ton of homework, but if you want we can do it together," Stella suggested.

"I can come over if you want but my dad wants me to mow the lawn tonight so I can't be too long," Lukas answered.

Emmi shrugged. "I have to go to my advanced math placement program."

"Hey, me too!" cheered Aury.

"Eh, it's okay, maybe another time since you guys have places to go," I concluded. "My sister's home from college, anyway. You all should come meet her before she has to go back for the year."

"I'd love to meet your sister," Lukas said enthusiastically. My mind flashed to Valorie and my conversation that morning about Lukas. I gave a fake excited smile.

The entrance to the auditorium appeared. "I've got to grab my bookbag, guys. See you tomorrow," I told them with a wave.

After getting my bookbag, I called my mom to pick me up. Soon I was at home, settled at the dining room table, with my complicated-looking math homework spread out in front of me as I groaned.

"That looks hard, sis," Valorie said sympathetically, coming up from behind me. She pulled out a chair beside me of the worn circular birch table that we'd had since I was little and sat down. "What did you have after school today again?"

"An S- Sorry, I mean a chess club meeting," I said, flustered at my own idiocy. I felt like there really was something wrong with me on this mission. Where was the cool, collected Cam who had been so successful at three missions so far and was the most experienced of any of her friends?

"Uh-huh," Valorie said disbelievingly, shaking her head so her golden earrings clattered. "Chess club? When have you ever been interested in chess?"

"Since this year," I said defensively. My chocolate eyes glared into hers. "Look, Val, why are you trying so hard to find a deeper explanation for everything I do? I don't have a boyfriend, I'm interested in chess, and you're being really annoying!"

"Annoying?" Val scoffed. "I would say annoying is the little kid who showed up with Mom at the coffee shop in the middle of my first date because you wanted to, quote on quote, 'See Valorie kiss someone!'"

"You call that annoying?" I screeched. I'd forgotten all about that. "Annoying is when you went up to the first boy I ever had a crush on and told him, 'My little sister likes you. Be nice to her or I'll break your face.'" Then I reconsidered. "Actually, that was kind of sweet."

"It was so annoying when you tried to comfort me by drawing me a crappy picture of us together after my best friend ditched me!" Valorie sputtered. "Wait. That was actually really sweet too."

"We're being stupid," I sighed. "I'm sorry, Val. I love you and I miss you."

"I love you too. Cam, just know, that you can tell me anything that's on your mind. Really. Anything," Valorie told me seriously.

And right there, in that moment, I wanted so badly to tell her about the STPOW.

But I didn't. I loved my sister, but if the STPOW was revealed, the world could fall into chaos and war. Nothing was worth that.

My mom walked in to find Valorie helping me with a hard math problem. "Aw. Aren't sisters' sweet?" she sighed lovingly.

I grinned at my mom. "Yep."

The day passed by quickly. Valorie and I talked for hours and hours, catching up about college, her job plans (Valorie had wanted to be an editor for a long time, I'd eagerly told her about my idea about being a writer. She suggested that we collaborate on a novel sometime) and about my school life. I'd forgotten how much I missed having a sister around to vent my feelings and life to.

Valorie gushed about her boyfriend to me, I eagerly listened and gave little oohs and awwwws at the appropriate times. Then I tentatively told her about Lukas. She was super supportive and sweet. The night ended at midnight when my mom flicked on the light to my room and told me to get some sleep, I had school the next day.

So, I did, saying goodnight to Valorie and laying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking...

And I thought I'd fall asleep fast. I was exhausted, and ready to catch some z's. But sleep dangled just out of my reach as my mind buzzed with thoughts about the STPOW, worries that I'd spill the secret to someone, hopes that I'd find better information the next day.

Suddenly, I got an idea. If I could search Jai's jacket when he took it off and find the gun, he'd be suspended or expelled. It might even have legal consequences. Jai out of the way meant one less thing to worry about. One less obstacle protecting Shardstorm.

A higher chance of winning the war.

### Chapter Seven

The newest hip-hop dance tune by my favorite artist jolted me from a deep sleep at 6:00 am sharp. I'd changed my alarm from the normal jarring beeping when one day I'd gotten so scared by the morning BEEP that I accidentally smashed a little cat figurine on my dresser trying to reach the snooze button.

Anyway, the words, "And we'll dance! All night! We'll daaaaance by the MOOOOONLIGHT!" actually did get me up and moving faster. I did a couple dance steps across my floor as I threw on a new peach Aeropostale shirt and black leggings.

I grabbed my phone from the charging port and checked the weather. Ugh. 68 degrees and rainy. I twirled to my closet and flung it open, choosing my waterproof track jacket from years ago.

"And nobody can stop the beat!" I sang along to my still-playing alarm.

Then I covered my mouth in horror as I remembered that Valorie, poor, tired Valorie was trying to sleep in the room right next to me. I strode across the room and smacked the "Off, reset" button on my alarm and it went silent right in the middle of a long, high note.

I tiptoed to my bathroom and got ready a lot quieter from then on.

Twenty minutes, a dash of concealer to hide my horrible zit, a hair-straightening brush and a huge bowl of cereal later, I walked up to the bus stop to join Violet, who was scrolling through her text messages quietly. She jumped when she saw me and quickly put her phone away, but not before I saw the contact, "Jai," with an emoji heart, as her most recent message.

Violet turned slightly pink. "Hey Cam! Beautiful day!"

A raindrop plopped onto my head and I pulled up my hood.

Violet sighed. "Well, not really beautiful. Actually, it's fairly gross out here."

"Agreed," I told her, accepting her attempt to herd my thoughts away from Jai's contact.

The bus pulled up. Slightly early, but I didn't mind. Anything to get out of the rain. Now the rain was more than just a single drop, the water poured from the trees and from the sky, dripped down my hood and splashed onto my brand-new light blue high-top Converse. I sighed as I climbed the slippery steps to the bus, watching the muddy water seep into the light blue fabric. "Bad day to break these out, huh?"

Violet nodded sadly, looking down at her own waterproof Crocs. "Yeah." She smiled a little. "I checked the weather."

"I did too, ugh, I'm so stupid," I groaned, making my way onto the semi-warm bus. For some reason, even in the fairly cold weather, the A.C was running full blast, pumping cold air and making me shiver.

I found a seat next to Violet as the bus lurched, spewing fumes through the open windows. "So. How was your first day of high school?"

"Not bad," Violet told me, shoving her bookbag under the seat. "How about you?"

Before I could speak, the bus driver screamed at two boys who were taking turns throwing pens at each other, "NOT ON MY BUS? YOU HEAR? LOOK AT THE RULES! NO THROWING SHARP OBJECTS!"

A girl giggled, and the bus driver turned on her. I quickly pretended not to be watching.

"My first day was pretty good," I told Violet. Then I sighed, wishing beyond belief that I could get the weight of being a spy off my chest to somebody I knew and trusted, and who didn't have opinions or bias. "Just... a little bit of stress and drama between friends for... reasons."

"I feel you," Violet answered dramatically. "I hate the fact that people remember me as that 'fat Korean kid' from middle school and I can barely make any friends because of it."

The boy behind us snickered. I gave him the evil eye and then turned back to Violet. "That must be rough."

We talked the rest of the bus ride, about school and Jai (I didn't say a word about Jai, but Violet raved about him like he was the most perfect being alive) and about the fact that we'd both had hours of homework, even though it was only the first day of high school.

It seemed like almost no time had passed at all when the bus screeched up to the stop.

"Okay, kids," the bus driver barked. "File out!"

We obeyed. Only a few of the rougher boys still dared to push each other back and forth as we exited the sickeningly yellow bus and raced for the school.

A bell rang, reverberating and echoing through the parking lot as I flung open the doors of the school, ready for another day at West Oliver Paige Top School.

First period was fairly uninteresting. After the promising first start Creative Writing had, the second day made it seem like the class would be all vocabulary and reading other people's work. I managed to catch Asher's eye once when he was supposed to be doing his work, which made me think that I wasn't the only one trying to get information on the enemy.

Second period, I crashed into class five seconds after the bell had rung. The line to the bathroom had been so long I'd only had thirty seconds to make it to class after I'd gotten out.

Jai glanced at me as I flung my stuff under my chair, quickly taking out my homework from the night before and clicking the top of a mechanical pencil until the lead appeared.

Agent Semaj looked at me. "Remember, after the first three days of school, I will begin to mark tardies." Then he pushed up his glasses and gave me a look. The look could easily be interpreted as a strict, don't do this again teacher look, but I interpreted it for what it really was.

Keep your head in the game, Cam.

Keep my head in the game. Right. I could do that. I snuck a glance at Jai. He was copying down homework. I took out a very small bottle of one of the weirdest pieces of spy equipment, but perhaps one of the most helpful: any person who got this powder on their skin immediately needed to use the bathroom. Agent Semaj had tried to explain how it worked to me, something about messing up hormonal and nerve signals, but he lost me after the first sentence.

Anyway, the powder was great for getting enemies out of the way in casual mission situations. I sneakily unscrewed the top, hiding it under my jacket. Jai didn't even look down. He raised his hand. "Teacher? Mr. James? I think Cam might be hiding something she's not supposed to have."

Quick as a flash, all my spy training came back to me, and I stealthily put the lid back on the container, shoving it in a hidden pocket (added by the STPOW) in my bookbag, all while staring at Agent Semaj with a confused and innocent look.

"I don't know what he's talking about, Mr. James. I was taking out some gum, but that's allowed in class," I answered, holding up a hastily produced pack.

Well, that was a mistake. "Ooh, can I have a piece?" Violet whispered from next to me. Echoes of her question reverberated through the classroom.

I groaned. "No! There's only a couple pieces left, and it's my gum!"

The boy sitting after her craned his neck towards me. I jumped. It was the Ender Dragon boy, the one who had fallen asleep in my creative writing class on the first day.

"I like cinnamon best," he said dreamily, making me think he'd just woken up yet again.

I quickly shoved the gum away. "Well, that was mint," I lied.

"No, it wasn't. I saw the label," Ender Dragon boy said confidently as I fumed.

"Now, now, Charles," Mr. James said soothingly, striding over to us. "Jai, don't make accusations unless you're certain they're true."

Mr. James gave me a pointed glance. "Cam..." No more words were necessary. Get it together, he said with his eyes.

I'm trying, I glared back, then sighed, looking at Jai again. I had no idea how I'd be able to search him now. Maybe a different piece of spy equipment?

But as the clocked ticked away, I couldn't think of anything.

The bell rang at the end of class. Jai jumped up, leaving his jacket!

"Yes," I whispered softly to myself as I hung back, pretending to be picking something up from under my desk. Soon, the classroom was completely empty. Agent Semaj had gone outside to greet his students from there.

I grabbed Jai's black jacket with a small symbol of ice on it. I knew that this symbol meant that Jai was an Eliminator, a deadly warrior of Shardstorm's. The other two categories in his Leagues were Inventor, the intelligent scientists and masterminds, and Worlder, who could do both.

I had been told that if I was one of Shardstorm's Leaguers, I would be a Worlder. I supposed it was a compliment.

But I was getting distracted. I turned the jacket inside-out, searching for hidden pockets. My fingers ran through the fabric and fell on a miniscule zipper. I quickly grabbed tweezers from my spy equipment bag and pried open the long zipper. I reached my hand in expectantly and pulled out...

Paper. Shredded paper, arranged to look like a gun to the outside eye. I threw the shreds into the trash can in disgust, getting my stuff together so I wouldn't look suspicious if...

"Aha!"

The principal appeared at the door and my heart nearly stopped.

"I knew you were right all along, boy, that girl had the smell of rebellion about her as soon as I saw her dark gray and icy blue jacket. It looked like a motorcycle jacket, that's what made me worry."

His nearly-bald head shone with sweat and his rather large stomach burst out of his fancy dress clothes.

In other words, he was basically the exact stereotype of a mean principal. Just my luck.

I slowly raised my hands as if he were arresting me, then forced them down. I hadn't done anything wrong. But at the same time, I had.

The principal, I thought his name was Mr. Hawkins, turned and looked at Jai, as if seeing him for the first time. Jai gave him a charming smile, but the principal frowned. "Your jacket looks mighty like a motorcycle rebellious jacket too, boy." His eyes scanned the symbol of ice and I inwardly begged him to say something, to get distracted.

But without another word, Mr. Hawkins turned back to me. "No matter, we have a thief on our hands here." The principal gave me a wicked smile that almost seemed villainous. I let the jacket fall from my hands. My breathing was heavy and fast. I'd never gotten in trouble before, save for a teacher yelling at my friends and I once for whispering to each other in class.

I hadn't even gotten detention for that, but I had a different feeling about this punishment.

Agent Semaj burst into the room. I let out a breath of relief. Agent Semaj would fix everything. But I glanced into his eyes that usually held laughter and friendliness, I was stunned to see cold, hard, anger and disappointment, all directed at me.

I knew some of it had to just be acting, but I had a bad feeling most of it wasn't.

"Explain yourself, Cam," Agent Semaj growled. How could you get caught? his glare said.

"I-I thought I saw something suspicious in Jai's jacket so I wanted to look and see what it was," I said truthfully. "So I could tell a teacher."

"That seems reasonable," Agent Semaj commented quickly, changing his whole demeanor now that I had a decent cover-up story.

"Hmph. Reasonable or not, Mr. James, this deserves punishment!" Mr. Hawkins barked.

"If I may say something?" Jai cut in. I jumped. I'd barely even recognized the fact that he was still standing right there.

"Go on, kid," Mr. Hawkins permitted.

"Cam asked me earlier if I had any lunch money because she'd forgotten hers."

"I don't even buy my lunch here, I pack!" I yelled, reaching for my lunchbox... it was gone. Jai turned slightly towards me so that only I could see my lunchbox dangling from his hands behind his back. Dang, he was a good spy.

"Right. Whatever you say, Cam. Anyway," Jai continued, giving me an I win smirk, "Like I was saying, Cam asked me for lunch money. I said I didn't have any because I packed my lunch, and all I had was my emergency money I kept in my jacket, but I couldn't give her that. She tried to grab my jacket from my hands and that's when I decided to walk away," Jai finished smoothly.

And just like that, I was in ten times more trouble.
Chapter Eight

"He's lying, don't let him do that, he's lying to your face!" I protested weakly as I was marched to the principal's office. The bell rang, signaling the start of my next class, but the principals' steps didn't even falter.

"I'm going to write you up for an after-school detention every day until the end of the quarter," Mr. Hawkins heaved. "Stealing is not okay!"

My heart sank. That meant no more STPOW after-school meetings for an entire quarter. I really was messing this mission up, not just for myself, but for everyone.

I quietly walked alongside him Mr. Hawkins, resigned to my fate. My light blue Converses softly thudded on the grimy tile floor.

This was probably it. Maybe I'd be kicked from the STPOW. Sure, I'd saved the president and been a huge part of stopping the Android Attack, but all that would be for nothing if I let Jai, Asher, and their trainee get away.

I was losing my touch. I was becoming a worse spy, not a better one.

As I wallowed in my misery, Agent Rivers quietly came up behind me. I didn't notice her (in my defense, she was a very experienced spy) until she leaned over and whispered in my ear, "If I was Shardstorm, you'd be dead."

I jumped, then pretended like I'd tripped over a shoelace. Mr. Hawkins glanced at me, still not noticing Agent Rivers. "Problem?"

"No sir," I sputtered, continuing to walk. Agent Rivers kept pace with me.

"I've slipped a tiny bit of memory serum in Mr. Hawkin's water. Have him drink it. I don't care how. Just find a way," Agent Rivers muttered in my ear. I nervously sped up a little.

"I can't always rescue you like this," Agent Rivers continued softly. "Just this once."

"Once is just fine, I'll never mess up again," I promised under my breath.

"But for this, I need backup from the sassiest person I know," I brainstormed. Agent Rivers gave a reluctant nod and peeled away into the distance.

I pulled out my phone quietly and texted Stella, I need your best insulting skills, meet at principal's office in two min. Send. The phone made a little blooping sound and I quickly covered the speaker with my hand.

Luckily, Mr. Hawkins was breathing more heavily now, which must have covered the noise up.

After walking down a couple flights of stairs and across a hallway, we arrived at the principal's office. A cheesy poster stuck on the wall. It read, "Remember, principal ends with the letters pal!" A totally fake picture of a happy principal standing next to a perfect-looking kid was placed below it.

"Sorry, dude, but I'm not your pal right now," I mumbled.

Then I looked up. Stella was right beside Mr. Hawkins' office, waving her hand. "Hey, Mr. Fat Principal Man!"

Mr. Hawkins looked up, fuming. "Young lady, that is not appropriate. Now—"

Stella didn't let him finish. "Hey Cam, lets hit the bowling alley after school. Oh wait, that's not a free bowling ball, it's Mr. Hawkins head!" she insulted. Then she slipped me a grin, walking closer, and whispered, "I have no idea why you're making me do this, but it's really fun!"

Just like I suspected he would, Mr. Hawkins began to sweat and rage, pulling out his water bottle and taking a long swig. "You two are in major—"

But major what, we never knew, because Mr. Hawkins suddenly let the water slip from his hands. Its cap split open and water spilled onto the ground, soaking my light blue Converse that had previously been muddied by the rain. I jumped back.

"These shoes are really not having a good life so far," I muttered.

The few students spectating scurried off as to not get wet. Mr. Hawkins had a hazy, unfocused look in his eye. "What was I saying?" Then he looked at us. It was a little disturbing to watch his memories being erased, right before our eyes. "Cam. That's your name. And your little friend here... you're wearing a motorcycle jacket," he said abruptly, turning to me.

"It looks like..." then Mr. Hawkins perked up. "Have a great day, kids! Uh, why did I have you in my office again?"

I blinked. It was like we'd watched the last hour or so of Mr. Hawkins' day go by on rewind. "Um, to congratulate us on being... really good at... something."

"Well, congratulations again! I hope to see you around!" Mr. Hawkins said with a wave.

I glanced at Stella. She was already sprinting away. "My excuse was that I was going to the bathroom. I've got to go before teacher suspects anything. See you!" she yelled.

"Could I have a pass to class? I'm going to be really late," I mentioned to the principal.

He obliged.

The rest of the day went by without incident, except for in the last ten minutes of fourth period. The energy in the class was buzzing and vibrating as we finished our work and the clock ticked ever closer to the awaited bell.

"I wish we had a day off this week," Charles, the grumbly Ender Dragon boy who sat next to me this period, complained to one of his (I didn't like to judge, but) nerdy friends. I glanced at him. His eyes... they seemed to tell me a story, his story. And even though Charles didn't seem like the kind of dude to open up and tell a complete stranger about his life, I suddenly found myself wanting to know more. Who was he?

My watch beeped. I looked down at it. "Special mission for this evening: CONFIDENTIAL, ONLY READ IN COMPLETE PRIVACY," the words scrolled across the screen. I quickly pretended to struggle with putting on my track rain jacket while actually reading the words lit up in the darkness.

"Agents chosen: Star (of course, I thought), Whisper, and Wisp. Leaders: Agent Semaj, Rivers, and Swan. Meet at the front entrance of the school for instructions at three pm sharp. Don't be late, or we'll leave for Shardstorm's headquarters without you." Then the message ended and I pulled my track jacket the rest of the way over my head, messing up my hair badly.

But I didn't care. What I did care about was that my two best friends and my sort-of boyfriend were going on a special mission to Shardstorm's headquarters without me. Ugh. I tried to squelch the jealousy racing through my bones but it spread without my consent.

Charles gave me a weird look. Only then did I realize that I probably had been under my jacket for two whole minutes. "Got stuck," I explained cheerfully.

"What were you looking at under there?" he asked suspiciously.

The bell rang and everyone jumped up from their seats, racing towards the door. I lost Charles in the fray. Saved by the bell, I thought as I grabbed my own bookbag and slid out my phone to text Stella good luck, and to congratulate her on being better than me... again.

The bus pulled up at my house a little later than usual. I absentmindedly strolled towards my house, typing a message to Agent Semaj on my watch asking about how the mission was going.

Valorie was waiting for me on our porch.

I quickly snapped my head away from my watch and pulled the sleeves on my track jacket as far down as they would go. It was still a little drizzly, so hopefully I didn't look too suspicious.

Valorie's eyes immediately narrowed, however. She walked up to meet me. "What's under your sleeve, Cam?"

My watch beeped traitorously. Agent Semaj must have written me back. Valorie yanked my sleeve up, revealing my spy watch. The message from Agent Semaj scrolled across the screen.

"Mission is going well, we haven't found any information yet but we managed to break into Shardstorm's headquarters undetected," it read.

Valorie read each word, her lips moving silently. I was too frozen to pull my arm away.

When the message went away, I glared at Valorie, my heart beating fast. "That's my business, so—"

But I stopped when I saw the absolutely shocked and stunned look on my sister's face. "You're... you're some kind of CIA person."

"No, I'm not," I said immediately and automatically. "That's from my friend James. We play a spy game with each other. Look, see, the name Agent Semaj is James backwards!"

"Uh-huh," Valorie snorted, unconvinced. "You're in ninth grade, Cam. You stopped playing games like that at age ten."

"Did not," I protested weakly.

"You're a spy," she accused.

"I am NOT!" I screamed.

Then I looked around. "I am not," I said again, this time almost crying. I had failed at the mission, and now my secret was probably about to be revealed to my sister, and it was entirely my fault.

"If you don't trust me enough to tell me the truth, I won't push you. But I'm here when you're ready," Valorie said soothingly.

She was so nice she made me mad. I didn't deserve to be comforted.

I stormed inside the door and slammed it with a bang. "Hey, Cam, how was your day?" my mom called from the kitchen. She walked over to the oven and pulled out a plate of warm, fresh-baked cookies.

"Fine," I answered, mustering up all my willpower and turning away from the enticing smell of the cookies. "I have a lot of homework, so I'll be in my room."

And that's where I stayed for pretty much the rest of the night, doodling on scrap paper and studying for my math quiz (a quiz! Already! On the third day of school!). Now I'd wished I just confessed to Valorie. She was bound to find about the STPOW sooner or later. I'd just prolonged that day.

I got horrible sleep that night. I tossed and turned for hours, my mind racing at a thousand miles per hour. Lukas. Valorie. STPOW. Stella. Emmi. Jai. Asher. Shardstorm. Ugh, this was ridiculous! I had planned to ask Stella about the mission at school tomorrow, but this was driving me crazy.

I pulled out my phone and typed, How'd the mission go? Then I waited.

Two minutes later, I got a response. It's 12:30 in the morning, girl! I've got to get some sleep.

Sorry, I texted back guiltily, putting my phone down.

But Stella wasn't done. My phone pinged a moment later. I frantically flipped it over. Mission was okay. We didn't discover anything except for the room the teleporter or bomb or whatever is being built in. Now we know exactly where to come back when we get word it's done.

That's awesome, Stells! I typed back a little unenthusiastically. Were you ever discovered?

The response popped up a moment later. Only one enemy Leaguer saw us and Agent Semaj stunned him immediately, then gave him memory serum, so I think we're good.

I texted a goodbye to Stella and then flopped back in my bed. I expected envy and worry to keep me up for more hours yet, but I fell asleep quickly.

I guessed all I needed was to know that my best friend was okay.

### Chapter Nine

The clouds grumbled and pouted the next day as I trudged towards the bus stop. A huge thunderclap had woken me early in the morning. I'd spent the time awake studying for my math quiz.

It wasn't actually raining, but a heavy fog hung over the whole street, making the bright yellows and blues of the houses look dull and faded.

"Rainy day again," Violet mentioned cheerily as I squelched up to the bus stop in (guess) my light blue Converse. I'd had to jump over a puddle filled with crushed Cheez-Its (probably where some little kid had thrown them) to get to the bus stop, and I hadn't quite made it. Now orange flecks blended with the brown on my not-really blue anymore Converse.

"I can't stand days like this, it's like the world won't make up its mind," I answered. "Rain, or don't! Don't just thunder at me!"

The bus squealed up, splashing a dirty puddle from yesterday on us. I shook my dripping arms. "Ew."

"It's okay!" Violet comforted, a little too happily while shaking the dirty water off her own nice shirt.

"Why are you so happy today?" I asked suspiciously.

Violet grinned. "Some days, I just feel like I can't do anything wrong."

"Did Jai ask you out?" I asked suspiciously.

Violet deflated a bit. "Well, no."

"Is it anything to do with Jai?" I quizzed.

"Okay, okay, fine. I think he might do it today," Violet stage-whispered.

"You should really tell him you're not interested before it's too la-ate," I loud-whispered back. "He's a really bad person... like a really bad person, in a lot of ways."

"Not Jai!" Violet protested as the bus driver hollered at us and we trudged up the slippery bus stairs. "Jai would never do anything wrong to anybody."

"That is so very untrue that I don't even know where to start," I sighed.

We found two seats next to each other and took them. The bus slowly rumbled away from the bus stop as soon as the last person had found their seat.

And though I knew that my time was running out, and that morning on the bus and in my first two classes I looked with all my heart for some important info, there was really just none to be found, or Jai and Asher were purposefully hiding it from me and me alone.

By the time lunch rolled around, I was exhausted, annoyed, and half-ready to throw in the towel on the mission so at least my fellow Agents might learn something. I loved being part of the STPOW, and I wouldn't trade that for anything, but something about this mission was just messing me up.

My friends were waiting for me by our usual spot, the gym. Stella noticed me first and waved me over. "Cam! Guess what the rumor is!"

I hustled over, throwing my bookbag to the floor and sitting down hard. "What rumor?"

"The rumor is Jai's going to ask Violet out with some big production at lunch!" squealed Marlee, maybe a little excitedly.

I furtively looked around. Violet hadn't sat with us at lunch since the first day (which made it easier to talk about STPOW business) but I wanted to make sure she wasn't hanging around, listening to our conversation. When I was satisfied, I turned back to the group. "That's crazy!"

"If Jai wasn't a supervillain, I would say it was really sweet," Emmi commented quietly. She took a small, dainty bite of her sandwich.

"I don't know. Big productions like that might be embarrassing for them both," Lukas said thoughtfully. "What if Violet says no? Or if Jai gets too nervous?"

I almost spit out the sip of juice I'd sucked in. "Jai? Nervous? I literally don't think I can imagine that."

"If he does do it, I'm going to record him and use it in my new study, Freshman Romance," Aury spoke up, already fingering a camera.

"Ooh, look! There he is now!" Stella pointed to Jai's figure walking into the cafeteria and standing on a table.

A teacher yelled "Get down!" but Jai didn't.

Aury wasn't the only one videoing this.

"I have a girl in this school, sitting right here close to me, who I love," Jai said loudly. I glanced at Violet, sitting at the other end of the table. Excitement was written all over her face.

"I have a girl in this school who I beg to listen," Jai continued. The teacher, who was coming towards Jai angrily, stopped in his tracks.

"And to this girl I say only one thing," Jai revealed, then turned and looked directly at me.

I blinked.

"Cam. Will you be my girlfriend?"

The whole cafeteria cheered as Jai rushed over to me, but I was stone-still. I couldn't move a muscle and I didn't know if I wanted to.

Stella hissed frantically into my ear, "Just say no, it's not that big a deal!"

Jai reached me and looked me straight in the eye. To the outside observer, tenderness played across his face, but he saved some malice in his glare for me.

"Generally, if you want someone to be your girlfriend, you don't try to kill them multiple times," I said strongly but quietly. Then I raised my voice. "I'M ALREADY DATING SOMEONE!" I scooted closer to Lukas. "SEE? SORRY, JAI!"

The cafeteria gave a collective, "Awwwww," then resumed their normal conversations.

"Oh well," Jai shrugged, and sauntered off, throwing a backwards glance over his shoulder filled with smugness.

Smugness about what?

"Good job, Cam," Stella gave me a hug.

"Yeah," Marlee and Emmi said simultaneously.

"No, not good job!" Lukas hissed.

"What, did you want me to say yes to him?" I scoffed. "What's your problem?"

"You used me as an excuse!" Lukas roared. "What was wrong with just saying, NO?"

"Let's not talk about this in front of our friends," I said calmly, not wanting to repeat the first-day-of-school fight. I stood up, grabbed my bookbag, and gathered my uneaten lunch.

Stella, Marlee, Emmi and Aury were wide-eyed as I waved a quick and awkward goodbye.

"Fine," Lukas responded coolly, following my example.

We strode towards an empty hallway on the first floor. The yellow walls seemed way too cheerful around us as we stopped right smack in the middle.

"So. I'm open to apologies," Lukas growled.

"Apologies? What did I possibly do wrong?" I answered defensively.

"I'm not an excuse. I'm a human being, and if you didn't want to be Jai's girlfriend, you should have told him that, not used me as some sort of weird shield between you two!" Lukas sighed exasperatedly. "It seemed a little cowardly to me."

"Oh, ho. You want to talk about cowardly?" I snarled. "Who has been comforting me, holding my hand, and going on dates with me for the past THREE MONTHS yet somehow cannot find the courage to actually ask me to be his girlfriend?"

"Well, I'm not so sure I want to be your boyfriend anymore," Lukas retaliated.

I recoiled back as if he'd slapped me. "Wait, let's not get crazy here."

"You're the one getting crazy," Lukas growled. A teacher walked by, staring at us curiously. We both slapped on faces of mock calm. As soon as the teacher passed, we glared at each other again.

"No, I'm not. I'm the only one who has handled this situation perfectly well," I said loudly.

"You know what? You're being ridiculous. We're done," Lukas said with a finite note in his voice.

"Fine," I said hotly.

But neither one of us moved. We just kept staring into each other's eyes for a long, long time.

Finally, Lukas spoke again, his tone a little softer. "We should probably go."

We trudged back out towards our next classes. The bell rang, signaling the official end of lunch. But for me, everything had already officially ended.

It was hard, but I managed to get through third period. When it was over, all I wanted was to tell the office I felt sick and go home, but I pushed through and made myself walk to fourth period.

I walked in a little late. "That's a tardy," the teacher yapped. I nodded numbly.

Everyone stared at me as I walked to my chair. Whispers followed me, and I knew I'd be known as the girl who rejected Jai for a very long time.

I almost fell into my chair, throwing off my bookbag and staring at the desk in front of me.

Then Charles, who sat next to me, whispered, "I'm sorry for what happened at lunch."

I managed to force a smile at the surprising kindness of Ender Dragon Boy. "Thanks, Charles."

Fourth period seemed to take forever. When the bell finally rang, my emotions were bottling up to the breaking point. I pushed my chair in with a bang and ran to the nearest girl's bathroom.

It was mercifully silent in the bathroom. I threw down my bookbag and lunchbox with a sigh, sliding into a stall and locking it.

But I didn't sit down. I kept standing, and I let the tears come.

The tears of jealousy that Stella was now the favored Agent.

The tears of longing that I couldn't contribute to the mission.

The tears of fear that I was going to be kicked out of the STPOW for good.

The tears of sadness that Lukas and I were over, perhaps forever.

The tears of anger that Jai would keep trying to ruin my life, again and again.

The tears of uncertainty about my life, that Shardstorm could be in it forevermore.

I stood there and cried for who knew how long. I heard the bell meaning the buses were leaving, and then a little later, a bell meaning the late buses had left. I sniffed, knowing Valorie would probably be able to come pick me up.

With a steadying breath, I prepared to push the stall door open.

But then the door to the bathroom slowly creaked open.

I froze.

"Yes," I heard a very exasperated, very familiar voice say.

She paused, like she was talking on a phone. "Yes, I've got all the information you want. They don't suspect a thing, don't worry."

Another pause. "I can try to capture the girl, Cam, but I can't promise anything. She's a smart one."

My heart nearly stopped.

"I'm sorry, Master," the very familiar voice said humbly after a short pause.

Then, "Okay. See you soon, Shardstorm."

Click.

I stood there in the stall, shaking. I knew I had only seconds until whoever was there noticed me...

And so, I took advantage of that fact and burst out of the stall, coming face to face with a shocked and stunned Violet.

"Y-you!" I spluttered.

For all my bravado, I still knew I'd find it hard to hurt one of my closest non-spy friends.

At least, who I thought was one of my closest friends.

I couldn't believe that the hidden Leaguer we'd been searching the school for was under our nose the whole time. Ugh, it was so annoying that literally almost everyone I knew and trusted ended up being a traitor!

I guess that was one of the repercussions of being a spy.

"Me," Violet said grimly, recovering quickly from her surprise. "What are you doing here, Cam? Now I'm going to have to kill you instead of taking you prisoner. So sad. You could have been so useful." She pulled out a walkie-talkie and begun to speak on it.

"No, you don't," I snarled, trying to snatch it from her hand.

But Violet had an iron grip. "What's wrong, Cam? Need something?" she taunted. Her whole personality had changed in a snap and it made chills run up my spine.

I lashed out, using my skills as a black belt in Tae-Kwon-Do, but Violet effortlessly blocked each attempted blow. "You know, Cam, Jai told me that your kindness was your greatest weakness," she commented, kicking out a leg and sending me sprawling to the floor.

I gasped in pain and quickly got back up, but I was rapidly growing slower and slower.

"Kindness is a strength," I panted.

"Well, not really," Violet responded patronizingly, sticking out a hand to block an attack I didn't think she'd see coming. "You see, in sixth grade, Jai came to me. He said he saw power in me, power that would work well for Shardstorm. I agreed."

She narrowed her eyes. "Best decision I ever made."

Violet casually punched me in the stomach a second before I could block it. I doubled over, wheezing, sucking in a sharp breath then gasping, coughing, trying to catch my breath.

"And then, when eighth grade came around, I donned a suit of fake fat," Violet lifted a little of her shirt so I could see her wicked abs underneath, "a fake story of a poor little Korean kid, even though I was born right smack here in the USA, and boom, that's all it took for you to notice me, to take me under your wing." Violet shook her head in mock wonder.

I recovered from her blow and punched weakly at her head. My endurance was waning, and Violet's hadn't even broken a sweat. She grabbed my fist and swung it back at me. I stumbled.

"That made it sooo easy for you to believe my little story about being in loooove with Jai," Violet snorted. "And it made it so easy for us to tear your friendships apart. One..."

She kicked my side and I sucked in a sharp breath.

"by one..." she twisted my arm behind my back so hard that I felt spots rise in my vision and I screamed in pain.

"By one..." She punched me in the side and I fell to one knee.

"by feeding your other Agents information and leaving none for you," Violet revealed, kicking me so hard in the head that I almost blacked out.

I crumpled to the floor, sprawled on my back, my head throbbing. I gasped for air, breathing so quickly I thought I was going to pass out.

I really hated Shardstorm's enemy agents. How were they so much stronger than us?

"And now here we are, me about to kill you," Violet finished with a flourish, indicating my weakened form on the ground.

"You don't even have a gun," I rasped. I tried to turn over on my stomach, reaching out a hand and desperately pulling myself an inch forward, away from Violet, away from my imminent demise. My breaths rattled in my lungs.

"Well, little Cam, there's a big difference between being a Leaguer and being an STPOW Agent."

She leaned so close to me I could see the evil glinting in her dark brown eyes.

"Shardstorm teaches us to kill without using weapons."

### Chapter Ten

I prepared to make one final stand and go down fighting, trying to sit up and hold my hands out in a fighting pose.

But I couldn't do it and fell back to the ground, panting, knowing my time was up. I was so weak. Why was I so weak?

Suddenly, Violet's walkie-talkie crackled. She held up a finger to me like, hope you don't mind waiting thirty more seconds to die. I would have crawled or run away right there, but it was impossible in my current state. I desperately tried to push the encroaching darkness in my thoughts away.

"Good news for you," Violet snarled at me after a moment. "Shardstorm doesn't care about you anymore, because his creation is finally complete."

"You mean the bomb or teleportation device?" I mustered all my strength into getting the words out.

Violet laughed. "No, idiot. But if you don't know what his beautiful machine is, I'm not going to tell you."

She waved, giving me another kick in the side for good measure as I lay there sprawled on the floor.

I struggled to breathe, feeling like all my ribs had been broken. I gulped in air, then gasped it out, my heart beating unhealthily fast.

"Buh-bye!" she yelled over her shoulder, and then was gone.

I couldn't move. The pain was not the worst I'd ever felt, but it was great enough to keep me from getting back to my feet. I tried to breathe, sucking in shallow breaths, then coughing them back out.

I felt broken, physically and mentally. I was broken. All I could do was lie there on the dirty bathroom floor, utterly defeated and hopeless.

Steps suddenly thudded on the floor, coming closer and closer. I braced myself. Was it Violet, coming back for more?

But the two sets of eyes that suddenly swam in front of mine weren't malignant and brown. They were pure blue and light green.

"Cam?" The familiar voice of Stella spoke.

I tried to force a word out, but couldn't.

"That's like, not good," the other voice spoke up, chewing on a huge wad of gum...

As my vision refocused, I realized that the preppy, mean girl Sophie was the other set of eyes hovering over me.

"We should, like, call an ambulance," Sophie suggested.

I worked up enough strength to throw my hands over my eyes and yell, "NO!" at the exact same time Stella did.

Sophie looked startled. "Like, okay then. But-"

I sat up slowly, grunting with the effort. The world spun for a moment but I ignored it. "Stells," I said quickly and breathlessly. "The Leaguer who infiltrated our school is Violet." I barely even noticed that Sophie was listening, and that her eyes were growing wider with every word I spoke.

"I know," Stella said sadly. "I'm sorry, Cam."

"It's okay." I said, squinting with effort and getting to my knees. "But I'm going after her."

"Uh, is it really wise to go after the bully who did that to you?" Sophie spoke up, still not quite understanding the gravity of the situation.

I figured that it was a little late to hide the truth from Sophie. We could give her memory serum later. "Unless you want the entire population of planet Earth to be enslaved by a supervillain by the name of Shardstorm, yes, I think it's a pretty good idea to go after her."

"Sounds fair enough to me," Sophie said, shaken.

Stella offered me a hand up, and I took a few deep breaths, steadying myself. I looked right at Sophie. "Please don't follow us."

Then I turned my focus and my eyes back to the person who, luckily, could come with me. "Let's go, Stells."

We began to jog in the same direction Violet had. My head twinged and ribs throbbed and I knew I would not be able to get out of my bed the next day.

We ran through the halls of the school, ignoring the teachers who yelled at us to stop. "So, how did you know I was in trouble?"

"I was just getting out of the STPOW meeting for those who'd gone on the special mission yesterday, when I saw Violet sprinting away from the bathroom, holding up a walkie talkie and frantically whispering into it. Something about that seemed wrong to me," panted Stella as we reached the front doors of the school and flung them open.

"Where do you think she went?" I asked, looking back and forth.

"Look!" Stella yelled, pointing off in the distance.

I gasped at what I saw.

One of Shardstorm's transportation devices, the Stormrider (a mix between a car and a plane that could apparently reach speeds of 500 mph), was resting on the main soccer field.

The varsity soccer players, for all their bragging about their toughness within the safety of the school, were either running around crazily, screaming, or staring up at the Stormrider, dumbfounded.

I couldn't believe Shardstorm had so little respect for trying to keep the world and the battles of spies secret. That meant a whole lot more memory serum, and I didn't know if the STPOW would ever have enough.

"We gotta catch it!" Stella concluded frantically, having seen one of these when we infiltrated Shardstorm's headquarters for the Android Attack.

No other words were necessary. We sprinted for our lives towards the Stormrider.

When we got somewhat close, I motioned to Stella and we split up, snaking through the grass and using fences, goals, and soccer players as barriers as we smoothly ran from one to another.

Finally, we reached the vehicle. By then, it was already rumbling and shuddering, which meant we probably wouldn't be discovered, but we also had to act fast. I motioned to a little emergency platform on the bottom. A small railing ran along one side, and a shaky ladder was folded on top of it.

Stella grabbed a hook from her spy equipment and threw it. It nearly caught onto the bottom ladder rung, but just missed. I took out my own hook and gave it a toss. With a small click, it latched on.

Stella grinned. "Nice throw."

Together, we used all our strength to pull down the ladder.

Now the Stormrider was rising slowly into the sky. "Go, go, go!" I panted as we bolted up the ladder. Any other time I would have been cautious enough to go slowly, but I had to risk the fall to make it onto the platform in time. The rusty metal rungs creaked.

I'd almost made it onto the ladder when the Stormrider lurched, and started flying quickly forward.

"Stella, we're not going to be able to hold on if this thing reaches five hundred miles per hour!" I screamed.

And as soon as I'd said that, the wind picked up and threw me onto the platform.

"Whoah!" I screeched as I slid from one side to the other and suddenly was in the open air, grabbing frantically for a railing.

I managed to link a pinky finger around the railing. My feet dangled freely into the open air. My smallest finger was all that stood between my life and death.

Stella, meanwhile, had made it onto the platform and was holding on for dear life with two hands. Suddenly, with a particularly wild jolt, the Stormrider turned. Stella lost her grip and flew off the side of the platform towards me.

"STELLA!" I screamed.

Mercifully, impossibly, Stella grabbed my foot as she was about to plummet to her very high death.

Now the strength of my pinky finger was responsible for the lives of two teenage girls, one of whom had eaten half a carton of ice cream the night before and so probably weighed a lot more than she did yesterday (confession: it was me.). Stella's jeans waved like a flag in the wind. It was like one of those action movies where there were tons of fights and scares and then all the main characters ending up dying anyway.

No, I told myself, don't think like that. I sucked in my breath and pushed myself forward, wrapping my arm around the railing.

"Cam... I can't hold on much longer," Stella whimpered. Her hand clutched my light blue Converse (hey, those shoes were good for something!) in a literal death grip.

"Hold on!" I screeched as I wrapped my other arm around the railing, pulling my thin, tan legs forward onto the platform. "Can you grab the railing now?"

"No!" wailed Stella. "I can't... let... go!"

"Oh, good Lord," I groaned exasperatedly and worriedly, feeling helpless.

I heaved a breath, managing to sit up and inch the leg that Stella was attached to forward until her pale hand reached out and looped around the railing.

I sighed in relief as Stella clambered up onto the platform beside me and let out a shaky breath. "Jeez," she said.

"That was probably the scariest moment of my life," I admitted. "I'm so glad I didn't lose you, Stells."

Stella got herself into a more comfortable position. Her face was white as a sheet, but she still managed to smile and say, "Scarier than almost being blown up by a bomb?"

"Yep. But to be fair, I was unconscious for like half the time all that was going on, so I don't really get any bravery points for that," I admitted.

"Scarier than the time Zoey was almost shot by a poisoned bullet?" Stella asked.

I groaned. "Oh, that's a hard one. She was so little, it made it so much scarier. But I feel like, in the back of my mind, I always knew that if I needed to, I was going to jump in front of that bullet. But that wasn't very brave either," I hastened to add humbly. "You all would do the same thing."

Stella raised her eyebrows. "Did you see any of us jumping alongside of you in front of that bullet? Heck no! 'Cuz we're all cowards," Stella answered, not sounding as saddened by the revelation as I'd expected. "I've told you this once, and I'll tell you again: You're the bravest person I know."

She looked at me closely. "And that's why I really hope that I'm not assigned mission leader again."

The wind whistled through my ears as I struggled to think of a response. My short brown hair whipped in front of my chocolate eyes. "Why?"

"You're braver, smarter, and kinder than me, plain and simple. I don't really like being leader when I know there's someone a hundred times more capable sitting right next to me."

Stella brushed her light blonde hair out of her face thoughtfully. "I personally think Agent Semaj was ridiculous to suspend you from special missions. It's not like he assessed everyone..." she suddenly looked shaken. "Or did he?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't think you would have ever realized the janitor was more than a janitor unless you'd let him down the tunnel to the STPOW," Stella said slowly. "So maybe... we've all been assessed. And we've all passed. Except... you," she finished apologetically.

"I mean, I guess it's like all these villains keep telling me. My kindness is my greatest weakness," I groaned. "I could have knocked that freaking janitor unconscious with one blow. Not to brag, it's just a fact," I clarified. "I'm a black belt and a spy! But I didn't, because I felt bad." I'd barely even realized that about myself until I'd talked it out, out loud.

"I mean, your kindness saved Zoey's life. Your kindness let us rescue Emmi. Your kindness is the entire reason Aury's a part of the STPOW!" Stella said passionately. "Let villains say what they want. Your compassion for others is what I love about you."

Stella leaned her head against my shoulder as the wind whipped our faces and the railing creaked behind us. I closed my eyes and let my mind settle in the moment. I didn't need to be worried about the past or future right now.

I needed to be right here, right now, with my best friend beside me and my mind, for the first time in days, clear.

The minutes stretched into what felt like hours as we rode. I shifted a little. "You think we're almost there?"

"Probably," Stella said uncertainly, yawning and stretching. "I think I fell asleep. Wow, high school is already taking a toll on me."

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you."

"It's fine," she said, yawning again. Then, a moment later, "Look!"

I followed her eyes downward. A very familiar grassy field sat below. It was the same field where we'd found the trapdoor to Shardstorm's headquarters before during the Android Attack. "I thought Shardstorm would have moved his headquarters after so much of it was destroyed."

"His minions probably rebuilt it," Stella muttered.

The Stormrider slowly started descending. I glanced at Stella. "Maybe we should find a way to get out of here before they notice us."

"One step ahead of you," Stella answered with a grin, pulling out a lightweight folded tube from her spy equipment bag. "This is called an airstreamer! Agent Semaj said that it shoots out a stream of air that breaks falls from twenty feet or less."

The yellow and black Stormrider continued to coast slowly downward. I peered dangerously over the edge of the platform. "Now?"

"Wait ten more seconds!" Stella yelled.

Suddenly the Stormrider shuddered and lurched a bit, then shot downwards so quickly that we were thrown off the platform and slammed into the bottom of the vehicle above.

I managed to twist so that my back hit the steel, not my head. It hurt, but I was okay, until I looked down and noticed that the platform was already nearing the ground and I was falling.

Fast.

### Chapter Eleven

I glanced over at Stella and gasped. She'd been knocked out by the force of hitting the steel (probably with her head). Her limp form was falling next to me.

I air-swam as fast as I could towards her, but we were about to hit the ground and it wasn't going to be pretty. I frantically tried to think of the survival rate for twenty-foot falls. Five percent? Ten?

Just as my foot brushed the grass, I managed grab Stella's hand and hit the ON button on the airstreamer. Air shot out of the top, hard enough to seriously injure had I been in its path.

We slowly floated upwards a couple feet, then the airstreamer stuttered and turned off. Luckily, by that point, it was only a two-foot fall and we flopped harmlessly to the grass.

I knew time was of the essence. I really wanted to make sure Stella was okay, but I could see Jai's tan form exiting the Stormrider. Violet was right behind him.

"Okay, Stells, wake up, wake up, wake up!" I chanted softly, finding a bush and hiding behind it at an angle that I knew we couldn't be seen from. I took her pulse. Steady and strong. That meant the only reason she was unconscious was because of the trauma.

Just out of curiosity, I turned the airstreamer on again. Nothing happened. "Faulty equipment," I muttered. "We could have died because of faulty equipment."

I heard Violet's voice faintly from near the Stormrider. "You said Cam was a good fighter," Violet's voice floated over. "I destroyed her in seconds." I bristled.

"She's good for a spy, but she'd be eaten alive by us Leaguers," Jai said back. I could hear the smirk in his voice even from a distance. I inched closer.

"Oh, Jai. You're so bad," Violet said flirtatiously. It looked like her affection for him wasn't all for show.

Asher trudged out of the Stormrider next. Stella stirred from beside me, her eyes fixing on Asher, and said, with obvious malice, "Looks like Asher isn't enjoying being a villain as much as he did being a spy." Poor Stella had been betrayed by two boys, the most recent of whom, Asher.

"Stella!" I said joyously but quietly. "You're okay!" Then I quickly added, "But be quiet!"

"That's not a very warm welcome," Stella protested. "Ugh, how did we get here? Last thing I remember was flying upward and slamming into the underside of the Stormrider."

"I'll tell you everything later," I promised, "but right now, we really need to get inside the headquarters. Can you walk?" I asked.

"Sure, I'm fine. Just a bump on the head," Stella groaned, putting her hand up to feel. "Yep, that's gonna leave a fun bruise."

From a distance, I saw Violet lift something up from the ground and disappear below. I ran to a nearer bush, dragging Stella with me. "We can't lose them! We have to find that machine Shardstorm's building!"

"We need backup," Stella argued.

"Let's wait to call for backup until we actually get in. We may well not be able to," I suggested. "Is this the same entrance you guys used when you came for the special mission?"

Stella shook her head. "We set down in a mall parking lot, and went down a sewer pothole to get in."

Asher disappeared, then closed the hole behind him. "Okay, let's go!" I whispered.

Stella and I slunk towards where the massive, imposing Stormrider was parked. We hid behind its yellow and black steel covering. Stella kicked it angrily a couple times with a resounding gong. "I'm mad at the Stormrider for knocking me unconscious."

I ignored that.

"Look, they left the hole open a little!" I said excitedly, pointing to it.

Stella followed my finger with her eyes. "You're right!" she cheered. "Let's do this!"

I snuck up to the covering and pried it the rest of the way open with a squeak. A ladder descended into darkness. "I don't like this," I whispered. "We don't know where we're headed. Have any flashlights..." I trailed off as Stella pulled out her phone.

Suddenly, a bright glow beamed from the back of it. Stella waved it around happily. "Flashlight app Free! I'm using Shardstorm's WiFi."

"That's a really bad idea!" I hissed.

Stella shrugged. "What? You use the STPOW WiFi all the time in school! I'm surprised it even works, since the headquarters are so far underground."

"That is very different!" I grabbed Stella's phone and clicked the little WiFi icon. It turned black.

"Hey," Stella groaned, "I was getting almost three bars!"

I rolled my eyes and started to climb down the ladder. "Point that down here."

Stella obeyed, shining it into my eyes for a moment. "Oops, sorry," she giggled.

"This is serious," I chided, making it to the bottom of the short ladder. "It's possible that Shardstorm could be building a bomb to drop any moment. We can't afford mistakes."

Stella started down the ladder next as I looked around the room I'd landed in. "Oh my gosh," I breathed.

A huge machine lay before me. The walls of the room were black as night, and the lack of objects in the room drew all the attention to the machine.

It looked like a portal. That was the only way to describe it. A glittering blue sheen of translucent material shone in the middle, and a pure white material lined the edges of the machine.

Two Leaguer guards, their jackets both sporting the symbol of lightning, were guarding the portal. (Inventors, I thought.) But their attention was on the only door in the room, like someone had just left it. I knew we only had seconds until they noticed us.

I took a flying leap and smacked my hand into the head of one guard. He crumpled, but the other guard pulled out a gun and fired. A red bolt whizzed by my head. Stun gun.

"Oh no you don't," I growled, using a roundhouse kick to knock the stun gun out of his hand. The Leaguer rustled for a backup, but I took advantage of his distraction to kick him in the stomach, hard. He doubled over, wheezing for breath, while I grabbed his flyaway stun gun and shot him with it, then for good measure, shot the other guard again.

"Whoa!" Stella gasped, finally making it to the ground. Her eyes affixed on the portal-looking-machine. "I bet it is a teleportation device!"

"No, Violet said it wasn't," I recalled.

"You really trusting what she said?" Stella scoffed, walking forward towards the portal and sticking her hand through it, then pulling it out. "Oh wow, that feels weird."

"Don't be an idiot, that could be a bomb!" I shouted, then covered my mouth and looked around.

"Looks like a teleporter to me," Stella said with a shrug. "Maybe I should go in and see where it goes."

"Don't... you... dare," I hissed, pulling up my watch. "Now, we call for backup."

"Fine," Stella agreed reluctantly. "But we should look around the rest of Shardstorm's headquarters and see if we can find out what this is, while we're here."

"Good idea," I admitted, finishing my distress call and sending it to the watches of Emmi, Marlee, Lukas, Aury, Agent Semaj, and Agent Rivers. "We need to be really careful, though. We have no idea what could be out there."

"Yes sir," Stella groused, slowly opening the door to reveal...

Nothing. Just a dark hallway. As we watched, a light flickered on and a lone enemy agent Leaguer walked down the hallway, fingering his tornado badge and looking proud.

"Newbie," Stella grunted. "He looks too excited to be wearing that badge, and he's walking down a dark hallway alone." She grabbed my stun gun, aimed, and shot. The agent went down with a dull thud.

We slowly approached his limp form. "Looks like a good disguise to me," I said, raising my eyebrows. I grabbed his jacket and put it on, wincing to be looking so much like the enemy.

Stella took his stun gun, so we'd each have one. "Come on."

Stella and I slunk down the hallway towards the first door on the left, and pulled it open. "Let's have a looksee."

The wooden door swung open with a slight creak. I peered inside, but dust covered every surface and no Leaguers were in sight. The room was small, but it still would have been useful if an enemy agent wanted to use it. "We haven't seen that many of Shardstorm's enemy agents. You think something's wrong?"

"Easier for us if something is," Stella pointed out. "Let's just take advantage of our good luck while we have it."

"Okay, but I just have a really weird feeling," I groaned. "And I've learned not to ignore my gut feelings."

"Ignore your gut feeling for now, girlie," Stella told me. "Let's keep going."

We peeked out into the hallway. It was still dark. "One more room, maybe, then we'll go back to the portal and see if backup's here yet?" I whispered, pulling open the next black door and sliding into a large wide-open room right behind Stella.

It was the closest thing to beautiful that I'd ever seen in Shardstorm's headquarters. The high ceiling was made out of glass, and it showed the stalactites hanging from the stone roof of the cave Shardstorm's lair was hidden in.

I looked up in awe. "Wow. That is actually pretty cool."

"Look over here!" Stella called, digging through a mess of papers on one of the many desks in the room.

I strode over, looking over Stella's shoulder at the sleek packet of papers in her hand. "The Traveler 1000?" I read aloud. I looked at the picture on the front. "Hey, that's the portal we saw!"

"Shardstorm really needs to stop leaving his important information lying around when he knows that we can infiltrate his headquarters easily," Stella snorted, flipping to the first page.

I read the paper quietly. "The Traveler 1000 is a state-of-the art machine. It has only minor side effects, like minor nausea and dizziness at the destination—"

"See!" interrupted Stella. "It is a teleporter!"

"Uh, that still just doesn't sound quite right to me," I thought out loud. Then I peered at the paper. "Hey, look what the next paragraph is titled! Purpose of Traveler 1000."

"Read it, read it, read it!" chanted Stella, who was now rifling through the rest of the folders strewn across the desk.

"To bring Shardstorm glory—" I started.

"Oh yes, because that's definitely the purpose of every teleporter ever created. Sorry. Go on," Stella laughed. "You know I tease you because I love you, Cam."

"That seemed out of the blue," I glanced at Stella. "You're usually not the sentimental one." Stella gave me a what can I say look.

"Anyway," I continued. "To bring Shardstorm glory, the Traveler has been created to erase the STPOW's wrongdoings." I gave Stella a surprised look. "That sounds more like a—"

"Piece of information that two idiot girls would discover if they were snooping around where they weren't supposed to?" the voice of Shardstorm growled from right behind me.

### Chapter Twelve

I jumped a mile in the air. My heart beat so fast I felt like I was going to die.

Shardstorm looked like... he'd decided to work out. A lot. His normally bulging muscles popped so obviously I half expected them to explode. His long, pink scar stretched across his tanned face, and he wore it proudly like a battle scar. His deep, dark blue eyes flashed and scanned our situation and his head had been shaved so veins pulsed against his pale skin.

On some people, baldness looked innocent. On Shardstorm, it made him look like he was about to kill someone.

And odds are, he was.

I pulled out my stun gun, but Shardstorm had already pulled out his own and shot a bolt of red light at Stella. She fell backwards into the desk, crashing into it and sending folders flying everywhere. Shardstorm shot a bolt at me, but I dodged and fired at him. He sidestepped it easily, then reached out and grabbed my arm with an iron grip, then Stella's.

"Idiot girls," Shardstorm grumbled as he dragged the unconscious Stella and my struggling body towards the portal room. "Do you think that you could just waltz into my lair and shoot three of my remaining Leaguers without an alarm going off somewhere?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but Shardstorm cut me off like he could read my thoughts. "And yes, we've already captured your friends. Stupid, really, calling for backup," he shook his head and my heart sank, "because the death toll will be much higher."

He gave a cruel grin. "Yes, much higher.

"Let us go and we won't bother you again," I bargained, my voice cracking as I finally stopped struggling to save my strength.

Shardstorm laughed. It was a high, sharp sound and his voice cracked halfway through. I winced.

"Won't bother me again?" he snarled, opening the door to the Traveler 1000 room. "Like I believe that."

He tossed us to the floor, roughly, and slammed the door behind us. My arm twisted underneath me and I lay there, pain shooting through my veins, for a moment before regaining my wits and sitting up.

My eyes found Agent Semaj and Rivers, along with Lukas, Emmi, Marlee, and Aury. They all looked utterly defeated and exhausted, but at least they were all conscious. That meant there was still hope for escape.

"The STPOW have been like pesky flies since I became a supervillain," Shardstorm ranted, pacing around the room.

He whirled around and faced me. "Especially this one. She won my son's heart, and she stomped on it."

Shardstorm shook his head with mock sarcasm.

"Tragic."

Like he'd been summoned by his father's words, the door opened again and Jai, Asher, Violet, and Darkblaze (Aury's mother) strode into the room like they owned the place. The portal, or Traveler 1000, whatever it was called, rippled and shone.

"We've finally got them!" Darkblaze panted, giving me a self-satisfied glare that made my insides recoil. "Even my precious, traitorous, daughter," she purred.

Aury looked terrified.

"Now don't be afraid." Darkblaze grinned and pulled out a gun. "Come to Mummy..." I prayed it was a stun gun.

"Don't kill our prisoners before we've had a chance to play with them," Jai said slowly, sounding rather like a cat who had just caught a mouse and was going to bat it around a bit before eating it.

"Oh, very good!" Shardstorm said with a clap. "At least one of my sons has shown some backbone." Then his eyes traveled from his obvious favorite son to his other one. "Asher?"

But Asher was silent. His eyes were trained on Stella's limp body, and when I followed his gaze, I realized with a start that Stella was not unconscious anymore, and merely pretending to be so to gain an advantage.

I waited, my stomach in a knot, for Asher to tell Shardstorm about Stella's acting. But all Asher did was take a hesitant step towards her crumped figure, like he wanted to hold her and tell her that he was sorry for everything he'd done.

Violet, however, caught the strained movement and smirked, then followed his gaze to Stella and gasped, opening her mouth to tell—

"NOW!" Shardstorm barked. Everyone jumped. Agent Semaj caught my eye like he was planning something. My watch buzzed. I just messaged Stella. Get ready.

Asher's watch buzzed. Shardstorm had copied the STPOW's design for them. I fumed as I watched Asher check his message and hesitantly say, "Sir, another Leaguer has quit."

"Not now, you fool!" Shardstorm hissed under his breath.

But Agent River perked up, smelling blood. "Is there'd something you'd like to tell us, Shardstorm?"

"Most of his Leaguers aren't as loyal as I am!" Darkblaze told us proudly. "Almost all of them quit after seeing his plans get ruined twice. But I will stay with him forever!"

Shardstorm's fury threatened to boil over. His dark blue eyes narrowed.

"And who gave you permission to reveal that sensitive information?" he said, his voice dangerously soft.

Darkblaze looked afraid for the first time in my memory. Not afraid of us, not of the STPOW, not even of the threat of death, but of her master.

And suddenly I realized that if we ever made it out of this, it wouldn't be as hard to remove most of Shardstorm's supporters as we might have thought.

"Now! Enough of this!" Shardstorm growled, pulling out a stun gun. "I have tried my hardest to show mercy in letting you all live, but now I realize I should have killed you long ago." Just as he aimed at the closest person, a terrified-looking Marlee, chaos broke loose.

Stella reached out a leg and slammed it into Asher's stomach. He was just close enough to her that the blow connected and he doubled over in pain. At the same time, Agent Semaj held up an untied rope that he'd been secretly working on for the last several minutes, setting him, Agent Rivers, and Marlee free.

Stella grabbed Asher's stun gun and fired a blast at the ropes. They were singed off, and suddenly, mercifully, we were all free. "Let's go!" I screamed, heading for the door and slamming it open, punching Shardstorm directly in the face when he tried to block me. He reeled, not really hurt but surprised by the blow.

I'd opened the door to the hallway, and I knew there was an exit at the end, so I led the group of STPOW Agents as we all sprinted on the cold black stone underneath our feet.

Asher quickly recovered, and began to halfheartedly chase us along with the full efforts of Shardstorm, Jai, Violet, and Darkblaze. Red bolts flew through the air, somehow hitting no one on either side. I guessed it was harder to aim when running for our lives.

Finally, we reached the end of the hallway. I grabbed the doorknob and pulled. Locked. My heart sunk but I pulled harder.

"It's useless," crooned Darkblaze, stalking closer, stun gun at the ready. "It's locked."

"We noticed," I growled, cocking my own stun gun. Stella nodded and put her hands on her hips, giving me moral support.

"This one's sassy. Let's kill her first," Violet suggested, gesturing to Stella.

"No one is going to be killed today," Agent Rivers said strongly.

"Oh, sure. Except for they are."

Shardstorm gave a wicked grin and turned his stun gun on Stella, pulling the trigger four times before I could even blink.

"NO!" I screamed, checking her pulse and cradling her in my arms. Faint, but definitely there. "Please, no," I sobbed.

Agent Rivers suddenly reared back and kicked the door blocking us as hard as she could. It splintered. "GO! NOW!" she yelled, and we all scrambled through, picking up crazy splinters along the way. One embedded itself in my palm.

In the split second I stopped to pull it out, Shardstorm's eyes narrowed and he growled, "You will not all get away again."

And he aimed for Stella and pulled the trigger one more time.

I'd never believed people before that moment when they told me that in a life-threatening or terrifying situation, time seemed to slow down. But in that moment, as the red bolt whizzed through the air towards Stella's heart, I watched it like a slow-mo movie, powerless to do anything but wait...

And wait...

And suddenly I was in seventh grade again, a little, nervous Cam who didn't know anyone or anything since her only friend had moved the year before. I had sat down nervously on a chair before the start of class.

A smaller Stella had sidled up next to me. "That teacher looks like his beard took a turn for the worse, does it not?" Stella whispered, her accent the thickest I'd ever heard it.

I had laughed, maybe a little too loudly. "Are you new here? What's your name?"

"Stella," she'd said with a smile...

And then suddenly I was in eighth grade, the first time I'd ever learned that the STPOW existed. I'd rushed to Stella's class to tell her the news. Her grin split her face wide open.

"What are we waiting for?" she had yelled. "Let's go recruit you into a secret spy organization!"

I had laughed, and told her to quiet down, but in my heart, I had felt so much adoration for my best friend...

And then suddenly I was back here, in Shardstorm's headquarters, but it was different. Androids and robots were attacking from all sides and I was fighting blindly...

Then Stella, who had been injured earlier in the battle, was by my side, and we were fighting together, as STPOW Agents, as heroes, as Shardstorm's opposition...

As friends.

And then suddenly I was in the room that I'd been in only minutes earlier, the great, large room with a glass ceiling, and Stella was there, searching through the folder, and I said something to her and she laughed and teased me.

And then she looked at me seriously, like she knew, she knew what was going to happen to her only minutes later, and she said the last words I'd heard from her lips, "You know I only tease you because I love you, Cam."

And she did love me. We were the closest friends I could ask for, a tight-knit duo, a dream team within a dream team.

And finally, with a start, I jolted back to the present. Stella was there, in my arms, but she wasn't there anymore.

My best friend was dead.
Chapter Thirteen

Someone grabbed my arm. I pushed them away and stumbled, falling to the ground, holding Stella in my arms so gently, staring at nothing.

Shardstorm laughed, a cruel, dark sound, and only then I became aware that Asher had run over to Stella to try and shield her from the fatal blow, but he was too late. He slipped to the floor and sobbed.

"What a weakling," Shardstorm said coolly. "I'm so glad my other son can handle watching the eliminations necessary for the pursuit of my goal."

He beamed at Jai, but Shardstorm's smile didn't reach his eyes. I'd never seen a smile reach Shardstorm's eyes.

"Your other son didn't love..." Asher stuttered and choked, unable to finish the sentence.

"Love her? That's ridiculous," Shardstorm said with a wicked grin. "Remember, Asher, family comes first."

"Stella was the only person who ever cared for me," Asher growled. "You have a lot to learn about being a father."

"I don't care for my sons. I show them power, and it's better that way," Shardstorm snarled. "Now, who shall be the next to go?"

Shardstorm looked around at all of our terrified and unsure faces, and then turned to Agent Semaj, who was still attempting to look determined, even weaponless and trapped.

"How about you. You look like you're too egotistical for your own good."

He fired one, two, three bolts, and Agent Semaj crumpled into Agent River's arms as Shardstorm prepared to fire again.

"STOP!" I screamed. Shardstorm actually did stop, and looked at me.

"I-I'm the one you want," I told Shardstorm, my hands shaking, making Stella's hair move gently like she was still alive and going to get up any second. "You said it yourself, I'm the one who especially c-caused you the most trouble. K-kill me, and l-leave the Agents... the Agents... my friends... alone, and let them go."

"Hm. Does that sound fair?" Shardstorm stroked an imaginary beard as I trembled, half hoping he would say no.

"Fine for me. I've given up all hope that this one might return my affection weeks ago," Jai snorted.

Violet shrugged. "If it pleases you, master."

"The great and powerful Shardstorm knows best," Darkblaze said humbly. Then she shot me a dirty look and I knew she was hoping he'd agree.

"If it'll bring Stella back," Asher whispered, but nobody paid any attention to him.

"Fine then. Cam, it was rather pleasurable watching your little organization fail over and over. You would have made a decent Worlder," Shardstorm referenced the League of his that was both deadly and intelligent.

As I closed my eyes and waited to die, I realized that the words Shardstorm had just uttered were the closest he'd ever been to complementing me.

I waited for my thoughts to fall into darkness.

But I just kept standing...

and standing...

and I opened my eyes a crack, and I noticed that the stun gun was no longer in Shardstorm's hands. It was in Jai's, and Shardstorm motioned to me, giving his son a cold, calculating smile. "Go on. Prove you're really worthy."

Jai seemed to steel himself and I thought of the irony that after all this time, Jai would be the one to kill me after all.

But as his hand drifted towards the trigger, a crash sounded from behind us as Sophie (now that was a surprise), Angie, Zoey, and Vince (the children of some STPOW Agents that were currently in training) burst through the door blocking our escape and screamed, "LET THEM GO!"

Agent Rivers sprang into action. While Violet was looking the other way, she kicked her in the head, hard, and grabbed her stun gun as she crumpled. I tried fruitlessly to lash out at Asher and get his stun gun, but he curled himself tighter into an impenetrable, crying ball.

"Let's get out of here!" Agent Rivers screeched, helping the recovering Agent Semaj run out the door and head towards the ladder. I stumbled, and Agent Rivers came back for me. "I can take Stella," she said gently.

I let her, and started to walk towards the ladder. It was like I was moving underwater. I fell halfway. I couldn't move. Why couldn't I move?

Suddenly Marlee's bright hazel eyes hovered above my face. "Cam, are you okay?"

"I don't... I can't..." I rasped.

Marlee grabbed my hand, pulled me up, and then looked back towards the portal room. "I'm sick of running away." She let me go and ran towards Jai.

"No, Marls!" I tried to say, but my voice cracked and it just came out as a sob. Marlee reached for the extra stun gun on the floor but Jai hit her in the back, hard, and Marlee fell backwards into the wall with a sickening crack.

But then Emmi was there, her eyes hard. She grabbed the stun gun and shot Jai, Asher, Violet, and Darkblaze, only using six bolts.

Shardstorm glared at us over his shoulder as he sprinted into the distance. Emmi fired at him but he dodged it and disappeared.

She dropped the stun gun with a clatter.

Lukas suddenly appeared by my side. I collapsed into him, sobbing and probably completely ruining his shirt.

But he just patted my back and held me. "Cam... I'm so sorry. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay," he murmured.

And I knew they were empty words. It wasn't going to be okay. Nothing was ever going to be okay again.

"What should we do with the filth?" Agent Rivers growled, kicking Jai's limp form.

"Let's teach them a lesson and lock them up in their own prison," Agent Semaj, who had woken up and recovered, snarled, opening a trapdoor in the floor that we'd discovered during the Android Attack.

We shoved them all in there, and they fell a few feet before landing on the hard ground. Agent Rivers shut the trapdoor. "And good riddance to that. I know they'll escape soon, but for now, they're out of our way."

Then Agent Semaj turned to me as I poked my head out from its place in Lukas's shirt. His eyes were sorrowful and a tear trickled down his cheek. "I don't know why we keep losing such young Agents. I'm so sorry." He closed his eyes. "I'm so sorry."

I just cried even harder, burying my face into Lukas's shoulder. His shirt smelled like pine, like a Christmas tree. Stella got me a notebook for Christmas, that we'd filled with all our adventures. We'd still had one page left, and we promised to fill that one together once we conquered our freshman year. Now it would never happen.

But I knew life had to go on, somehow, so I summoned all my strength and followed the rest of the Agents as we trudged towards the portal room. Hot tears trickled down my face and I swiped them away angrily, but more squeezed out of my eyes to replace them.

When we reached the portal, Agent Rivers examined it closely. She was trying hard to put on a brave face, but I looked closely at her hands and saw them shake. "Let's take it back to the STPOW to do further tests."

"And just how do you think we're possibly going to get that back?" Marlee broke in. She winced a little and touched her back where Jai had hurt her. I fumed on her behalf.

Agent Semaj reached out and pushed a camouflaged button on the Traveler 1000's side. It immediately collapsed and folded into the size of a sandwich.

"I can carry that in my safe compartment if you want," Emmi suggested quietly. Agent Semaj nodded and put it into a small pocket in her leg.

"I guess now... we go back," Lukas spoke up quietly.

But nobody made a move. Nobody wanted to admit that after this tragedy, life would still go on.

"We'll prepare for the next battle and do experiments on this... this Traveler," Agent Rivers voiced.

"And we'll try our hardest to win next time, forever," Marlee vowed.

And though on the outside, all I could do was shake and sob, on the inside, I agreed with her wholeheartedly.

The time for hope, love, and peace was over.

Shardstorm had killed my best friend.

Now was the time for revenge.

### Epilogue

Three days later, I was still having nightmares.

To be fair, who wouldn't have nightmares after watching her best friend die in her arms? But it made me look very, very suspicious, especially to Valorie...

I woke up crying one night, crying so hard. I sobbed, flashing back to all the memories I'd ever made with Stella.

And suddenly Valorie was there, holding me. She knew my best friend had died, but everyone called it a tragic accident.

But Valorie didn't believe that.

As I sobbed into her lemon-smelling shirt, Valorie whispered, "Stella wasn't hit by a car, was she? You're a spy, and so is she, and she was killed during a mission."

Well, it seemed pointless hiding the truth anymore. I wiped away my tears and nodded. "She was shot too many times with a stun gun by a supervillain named Shardstorm."

For all her apparent certainty about believing that I was a spy, Valorie fainted.

_______________________________________________

The next day at school, I heard whispering between the huge trash cans as I walked to the parking lot. I peered in, and jumped about a mile when I saw Marlee and Charles (Ender Dragon Boy who had fallen asleep in class), their lips an inch away from each other's!

"What?" I screeched without thinking.

"C-Cam!" Marlee stuttered, backing away from Charles.

"You don't have to explain yourself, you can have relationships with whoever you want," I quickly backtracked.

"He's telling me stories, Cam," Marlee said softly, her eyes shining. "Amazing stories about worlds long past. About how he grew up in a different time... a different era."

"That's impossible," I scoffed. "There's no such thing as time travel..."

That night, we were all told to meet in the STPOW's main headquarters, where they'd stored the Traveler 1000. I met up with Marlee, Lukas, Emmi, and Aury at my old middle school's entrance.

"This is weird, being back here," Lukas whispered. Emmi and I nodded, our feet making light thumps on the tile floor as we looked around the deserted school where our lives had been changed forever.

"I never went here, so I wouldn't know," Marlee said quietly. "It looks... normal."

It did look too normal to be hiding the secret headquarters underneath it. And it looked to normal to be hiding the site of Stella's funeral... not her main funeral, with her family and friends, but our secret, private, STPOW funeral, where we'd quietly shared memories and told about how great of an Agent Stella was and how much she would be missed.

When we reached the main underground headquarters, it was unusually subdued. "The death of a young Agent always takes a toll on our older ones," Agent Semaj had confided in me after the funeral. That still held true, even four days afterwards.

Agent Semaj, Rivers, and Swan were waiting for us in a huge conference room. Desks and tables were scattered haphazardly in the room, but the portal was what everyone's eyes were drawn to. Its glimmering blue surface shimmered and rippled.

We all stared at it for a moment.

"Someone needs to go through," Agent Swan finally voiced, her lilting British accent hardening as she said the thought that was running through all our minds.

"I'll do it," Agent Semaj and Rivers said at the same time, stepping forward. Then they looked at each other.

"Let me protect you for once, Alen," Agent Rivers said softly, tenderness in her voice as her engagement ring sparkled and she gave him a light kiss.

"Fine..." Agent Semaj sighed. "I suppose I stopped protecting you long ago."

Agent Rivers steeled herself, glaring at the portal like its existence was a personal insult to her. "Be careful," I had just enough time to call before she stepped through and disappeared immediately.

We waited for a few seconds... then waited... then waited...

"Well if she teleported, she's not—" Marlee started.

But what she wasn't, we never knew, because at that moment, Agent Rivers came back through the portal.

The only time I'd ever seen Agent Rivers weakened before was when she'd been stabbed by an android a few months ago. This was time number two. As soon as the portal spit her out, she fell to one knee. I could tell that she was trying not to show her pain, but her face showed it all.

"What did you do? What was it? Where did you go?" Agent Rivers was assaulted with a flurry of questions as Agent Semaj helped her to her feet.

With that last question, Agent River's eyes hardened, but at the same time, they shone.

"I went to... last week."

She looked directly into my eyes.

"When Stella was still alive."

The End... but wait! Keep watch for the next book in the series! SpyCam continues!

Stick around after the acknowledgements for The Stella Pages, Part 2!
Acknowledgments (fair warning: SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT)

First off, thank you to Zane, in the Lego Ninjago show. (Just hear me out on this.) It pained me soooooo much to write Stella's death scene in this book. But my sister is kind of obsessed with Ninjago, and when she told me that a Ninjago character, Zane, was killed, I was a little bit morbidly intrigued. How would the writers possibly pull off killing a Lego without making it terribly traumatizing for small children? Long story short, Zane turned out to be a robot (I warned you there were spoilers, not just for my book, hahaha) and they found half his face after he died. (Traumatizing.) But he flashed through his memories before he died, which started giving me the idea for what Cam would be doing as the bolt traveled towards Stella's heart.

Thank you so, so, so much, to my dad. He was a lot of help with the story concept for this book, and he's always great to run my cover design by.

Also thank you mom. My mom was writing a book too while I was writing this one, but she still made time to edit this book for me!

Thanks to my sis, Logie, for being so supportive and awesome, and listening when I rant to her my ideas for the rest of my series. And she's always good for making an interesting plot twist even better!

Thanks to Luna for being an awesome editor! Your feedback just keeps getting better and better, and (yes, I kept count) three of your comments made me laugh out loud for a solid thirty seconds. My sister looked at me like I was crazy, but whatever. (Inside joke time: Waterlogged corpses. I'm going to stop there.)

Thanks to my Creative Writing teacher (I'll write this part after she edits it!)

And finally, thanks to all the people that I sent a frantic message to saying, "Hey! My new book's out!" for being so kind and supportive.

Now turn to the next page for: The Stella Pages, Part 2!

### The Stella Pages, Part 2

In a weird way, I kind of expected to die today.

I didn't recognize the feeling at first. A little extra nervousness in the pit of my stomach, an extra need to put all the sass I could muster into all of my words, a creepy feeling that I just couldn't quite grasp.

When we were all trapped at that door, and I nodded to back Cam up, Violet's eyes locked on mine immediately. And in that moment, I had no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I was about to die.

And I was all out of jokes, sass, and insults.

So as the first bolt traveled towards my heart, and I felt Cam tense up, I didn't flash through just my memories. Oh no. That would be too normal for Stella.

I flashed through my memories of Cam and I.

Well, not all of them. That would be pretty much impossible to do in the two seconds between a bolt being fired and a bolt hitting me. But I flashed through some of the best ones...

The first time I met Cam. Seventh grade. Cam had looked so nervous, sitting down alone on that cold plastic chair and facing the teacher with no friends or allies by her side. So I, also new, took it upon myself to march up to her and whisper, "That teacher looks like his beard took a turn for the worse, does it not?"

I knew my accent was so thick that it was possible Cam might not understand me, but her chocolate eyes sparkled and flickered with laugher, and all my worries faded as she giggled, her short light brown hair swishing.

Then with a whoosh, I was flying to eighth grade. Some idiot boy who sat in front of me and behind Cam was pulling her hair. After a few times, I knew I had to do something. "Stop that," I said loudly.

The boy didn't stop, so I shrugged, yanked his hair, and then high-fived Cam under the table. "Vengeance is sweet!" I crowed.

With another whoosh, I traveled to near the end of eighth grade. Cam had met me outside my class, and was frantically telling me about a disappearing note and a spy organization and my mind was buzzing but the important thing was, I believed her.

I always believed her.

Finally, I flew back to Shardstorm's headquarters, but we weren't backed up against a door yet, with the bolt whizzing towards my heart. We were in the big glass room, still searching through the folders, with false hope that we'd all make it out of Shardstorm's headquarters alive.

And in that moment, I was sure I was going to die.

So, I blurted out something cheesy about teasing Cam, but the important words in that sentence were that I loved her. She would always, always be my best friend, and I would always, always love her.

And finally, I landed back on the floor, trapped in front of an impenetrable door. The red bolt slammed into my chest, and then...

Blackness. Smothering, covering, mind-numbing, deathly quiet, unfeeling, unhearing, unknowing blackness. Darkness. Silence. Death.

But not for long.

### I hope you enjoyed SpyCam: The School Secret! If you did, I have four other books published. The first one, Journey to the End, is available on Smashwords, Kindle, and the iBook store. The second, Flicker, Fade, Soar, is available on Smashwords and the iBook store as well.

### The other books in this series are available on iBooks and Smashwords. These are SpyCam: The President Plot (book one) and SpyCam: The Android Attack (book two). All of my books are free, for your pleasure.

### Now, in 2019, I've published eight books! Check them out on Google, iBooks, or the Smashwords store by searching "Zoe Wynns."

### If you enjoyed this novel, please take a little time to rate it, or even write a review. For a teen author in a big world of other authors, every review helps my books stand out from the bunch (and, it makes me really happy.)

### Thank you for reading!

