Sudden Superhero

13. The Mobile Toy That Kids Should Not Play With

ONCE I WAS done with my homework—which took me until eight, unfortunately—I set off on my important task of the night.

The task shouldn't have been mine. Not because I didn't want to do it, but because I wasn't the person who should be doing it. I'd called Jenny about the issue today as soon as I'd gotten home, but she hadn't answered. Neither had Kavanagh. I was left alone with this dangerous weapon, and I didn't know what to do with it. Turn it over to the police? What if Ms. Henderson didn't want that? And it wasn't like I could stride into the Henderson Tech building with this thing in my backpack and expect to be taken to her.

So, there I was in my room, the weapon on a cloth on my desk. My door was closed but I hadn't locked it, in case Mom got suspicious. My laptop was open on my bed, replaying the newscast for today. Red Soldier foils yet another bank robbery.

It brought a smile to my face, to be appreciated like that, even though I still had a lot to improve.

My task: dismantle the weapon. I know, it sounds terrible, but there was something off. The cuff had a clear, blatant label that said Henderson Technologies. This thing? If it turned out that it didn't have a label...then what would that mean?

I was wearing gloves and my science goggles. Really, though, if this thing was going to harm me in any way, it would be by exploding, and in that case, my gloves and goggles would do close to nothing to protect me. But, I felt confident that it wouldn't explode, and so I carefully picked up the ruined pieces.

The blaster-gun thingy was broken the way a lego toy gets dismantled: it was apart, but certain pieces were together, and wiring held the all the pieces together like a mobile toy. A mobile toy that kids should definitely not play with, of course.

It was smooth and dark-colored, and if I already didn't know where it was from, I would definitely accuse it of being alien. I picked apart the metal gently, and thankfully, no explosion-esque noises were emitted. I stared down the barrel—at least, what I thought was the barrel—and realized something a little annoying. The metal work on this thing was good, it was a fully functional weapon...but I could see seams. Little things where the parts were welded together.

What bothered me was this: why would a large, rich, experienced corporation like Henderson Technologies have such visible seams? Wouldn't their products be more...sleek? Flawless?

Maybe I was overthinking it. It wasn't like I was a weapons expert, especially not about these things. And Jenny had said that these weapons were prototypes and not mass produced for actual use.

Shoving those thoughts aside, I went back to picking apart the weapon. The entire time, I kept on high-alert in case Mom decided to come in, and I looked for the label. I'd taken apart the entire thing by the time I found it.

The label was in the centerpiece of the blaster. It was a purple thing encased in...glass? Plastic? I couldn't tell. It looked like something that someone would call a 'core.' Yes. A core. That was what I would call it.

The core was what had the label, and that also bothered me, because I knew what this meant. I couldn't be overthinking this one, it was a simple and very plausible explanation: the people who had stolen the tech were now tampering with it, using it to produce other things. The cuff had been Henderson's, and although this core was, too, the blaster was their own creation. Which meant they were getting crafty.

Which meant that I had to get them before things got worse.

A bank robbery was one thing. But with a whole bunch of these blasters and cuffs, a lot worse could happen.