Spy School - Nemesis [1]

12: Hydroflasksus

The Queen Anne

Deck 3

Medical Bay

April 27

2000 hours

I suddenly woke up, gasping for breath. According to my internal clock, it was 8 PM on April 27. Over 24 hours had passed. I looked around. It appeared I was inside the Queen Anne's medical bay. There were several other beds in the room that had white curtains, along with various medical equipment: cabinets full of syringes, heart monitors, first aid kits. A nurse was sitting in the corner on one of the chairs reserved for visitors, the glow of her phone illuminating her face.

Mike was in the bed next to me, and was already awake. His rash had subsided, to an almost-normal skin color, and he was fiddling with the hospital tag on his wrist.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I mentally scolded myself. Why was it the one time we tried to have fun, we ended up in the hospital. And how was it that Mike and I were suddenly allergic to chlorine? I cleared the thoughts from my head as I talked to Mike.

"Psst! Mike!"

"Yeah?"

"Do you know if we are allowed to leave yet?"

"Well, I tried asking her-" Mike gestured to the nurse in the corner "-but she didn't respond."

"Well, lets assume we can leave, then."

Mike and I left the medical bay. Before we did, though, we cut off our medical bracelets and self-approved our departure in the nurse's log. She didn't bat an eye.

"Gosh, I'm so hungry," Mike groaned as we headed towards the elevator. My stomach growled- we hadn't eaten anything for over 24 hours. We went up to deck ten, and knocked on the suite shared by Cyrus, Erica, and Trixie. The door was quickly open, and we were shoved inside before the door was quickly closed again.

"Wow. . ."

The suite was turned into mission control. There was equipment everywhere, espionage and scientific alike. Several laptops were spread around the room, showing surveillance photos and camera footage, and there was a pile of scones at the corner of a table, most of them half-eaten. Erica, Trixie, Cyrus and Alexander stopped what they were doing and debriefed us with what happened when we were gone- with more scones, of course.

"When you left, did you make sure to cut off your medical bands and record your departure in the nurse's log?" Cyrus asked us.

"Yes," Mike and I chorused.

"Good," Cyrus replied. "While you were out, we took a blood sample from Mike and found what caused your sudden new allergic reaction. Its a compound called hydroflasksus." (A/N: Hydroflaksus does not exsist, all information about it is made up too, and don't tell me it sounds like hydroflask.)

"Hydroflasksus?" Mike asked.

"Hydroflasksus," Erica started, "can 'reprogram' the immune system, particularly near skin cells, and one of the things it can reprogram is sensitivity to certain molecules. An allergic reaction occurs when the immune system overreacts to a harmless or healthy element. The immune system kicks into overdrive, resulting in fevers, swelling, and rashes. With this, we can conclude that the hydroflasksus increased your sensitivity to chlorine or something else that was in the pool at the time."

"How'd the hydroflasksus even get into our system?" I asked.

"Well," Trixie began, "it has to be ingested, and the effect can take place after about 20 minutes. Since Mike was effected, we can guess around which time you ingested it. You only went to the pool once, right Ben?"

"Yea, when I had the reaction," I replied.

"Okay, but Mike went to the pool twice, which means we have more data. The first time he went was yesterday, right before we went to tutor the Mogifsky twins," continued Trixie.

"And the second time I went to the pool, when I had the reaction, was right after we went to tutor them," Mike said, catching on.

"So you consumed the hydroflasksus when you were tutoring. What did you eat while you were there?" asked Alexander.

"We had drinks and strawberries, it was probably in our drinks, because otherwise the twins would have consumed hydroflasksus too if it was in the strawberries," I infomed.

"We should question the kids now," Cyrus stated. "They may or may not be part of the plot, but we can still casually ask them questions."

"How?" Mike protested. "It's 8 PM, we only tutor at 11 AM!"

"Simple," Erica said. "They had fun with us when we took a break to go fool around in the shopping center. We'll ask them to meet us at one of the restaurants because we became good friends with them. They probably haven't eaten yet- generally, on vacation, people eat later in the day." 

"That's a good plan." I said. "Lets just hope they haven't eaten yet."

The only reason I updated was because I thought two weeks passed when I last updated instead of one. Oof. I hope you don't die from the unrealisticness of this book. Well, see ya next time.

808 words.