Patrick rifled through the assortment of tools laid out on Spongebob's coffee table. He grabbed rope, zipties, gloves, flashlights, and a billy club; he had no way of knowing what kind of trouble Alex and Scooter were in, or how hairy things would get when he got there. "It was stupid of me to let those two go alone," he said, more to himself than to Dom, who was trying to balance an armful of shovels after they had come rocketing out of the closet. "Don't get me wrong, Scooter's a great agent, and Alex is probably the best character to come out of this whole operation, but I should have been there. Spongebob is my responsibility, and I knowingly sent them into danger."

Throwing the selected tools into his rucksack, Patrick tightened the drawstring on his Aloha pants and headed for the door. He and Dom had agreed that Dom would stay behind and hold down the fort. They figured that somebody should be around to keep an eye on Gary, not to mention the possibility that Patrick wouldn't make it back in time to witness the countdown hitting zero. Their clocks now showed 7:20, hopefully more than enough time for Patrick to get to the Krusty Krab and bail out the rest of the team, but with the storm to contend with and Scooter's enigmatic screams on the phone, they had to acknowledge that Patrick might be tied up with that business until nightfall.

Stepping outside into the rain, Patrick was bombarded with wind and a wall of precipitation. In the short time he and Dominic had been preparing inside, the full force of the ongoing storm had crept into Spongebob's neighbourhood. The occasional street sign had been uprooted from the gale and water rushing down the road sloshed up and over the curb like the walls of a trough. At the very least, I don't have to worry about anybody being out and about in this weather, Patrick thought. Things would go much easier if he wasn't seen.

In the months since Mrs. Puff's apparent defection from the Larideans and the attack on the Treedome, the Krusty Krab and its surrounding area had remained unclaimed by any of the major players in Bikini Bottom's burgeoning secret organization scene. That was not to say, however, that the region was completely unoccupied. Tartar sauce dealers and literal loan sharks liked to send their street toughs into the area to drum up trouble, but these were typically fairly low-level goons. Even if he encountered a chest-beater or two, it was unlikely for word that Patrick Star was back on the streets to reach anybody who could do anything about it before Patrick was able to take care of what he had to.

The thunder had been dormant for the past ten or fifteen minutes, but it returned with a vengeance before long. Though it was only the early afternoon, the darkened sky called to Patrick's mind nights filled with scary stories and delicious snacks at the pineapple with Spongebob in simpler times. Now that he thought about delicious snacks, actually, Patrick realized he probably hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours. Had Dominic been feeding him while he was in captivity? That was a dark period, and he couldn't say for sure what exactly went down back then with respect to bodily functions. Maybe that was for the best. Considering his diet in the past few days, or lack thereof, it was no wonder his dump not long ago had yielded only gas.

Sneaking to the Krusty Krab called to Patrick's mind one such night where he and Spongebob had gone to pick up some late-night burgs. Squidward was alone at the till on a special late-night shift to accommodate some concert or stripper convention or somesuch being held that night, serving reheated patties that Spongebob had prepared earlier in the day. He had begrudgingly let Spongebob into the kitchen to whip up some fresh samples, and Patrick and Spongebob ate them on the way home. Back then, the trek to and from the Krusty Krab had taken less than fifteen minutes each way, but, as he spied a flock of jellyfish at a standstill trying to swim upwind, something told Patrick that this was going to be a longer night.


"Do you want to check out the office?"

"No. You'll know any hiding spots in there better than me. I'll do a sweep of the dining area, then head into the kitchen. If you see Alex, you know what to do, right?"

From his perch below the register, Scooter heard an audible shrug, then the two sets of footsqueaks crossing the Krusty Krab floor seemed to part ways. True to their owners' words, one set of footsqueaks headed towards the office Scooter had come from just moments before, while the other stayed in the main foyer of the restaurant.

Whether the intruders had not noticed his sound from before, or they figured there was no way Scooter would try to escape and that they could pick him off later, Scooter knew he had to make use of this precious time and crack this register.


Though he had been inside of Mr. Krabs's office many times over the course of his illustrious career as a fry cook, Spongebob had never had the opportunity to fully scope the room out while alone. Gently hoisting his rifle over his shoulder, Spongebob checked under various pictures and paintings and ran his fingers along the wall looking for any clues to a secret passageway or hidden alcove where Alex could be hiding.

Since his mission briefing the previous night, Spongebob had taken the opportunity to pore over any historic video footage of Alex he could get access to, as well as perform some espionage of his own and observe the kid in person. After Alex's rendez-vous with Patrick that morning and the mayhem that ensued, Spongebob had been forced to keep a wider berth on his target, but he had still thought of Alex almost constantly. He wanted to understand the life of that young detective, the life he had been told he had no choice but to end with his own hands.

Details about why Alex had to die had been sparse in the briefing. In fact, details about why Alex had to die had been completely absent from the briefing, and Spongebob's extensive research had only served to further obscure any potential method to this madness. From an outsider's perspective, Alex seemed totally typical. But Spongebob's orders had been specific. "It has to be Alex," they had said.

"And it has to be me, too?" Sponegebob had replied. That had been his only question. "Nobody else can do it?"

"In essence. But don't think we're depending on you too heavily. If it looks like you can't give us what we want, there are ways of taking care of the both of you."

The building groaned from the force of the wind, and the sound of the continuous bombardment of the roof called more to mind a warzone than a rainstorm. It was possible that the Krusty Krab wouldn't survive until nightfall fully intact. Wouldn't that be something? Spongebob thought - both the Treedome and the Krusty Krab, two places that were once so dear to him, destroyed the next time he set foot in them after meeting George. Spongebob also considered the possibility that, if he failed in his mission, the Krusty Krab might be destroyed regardless of the weather. This new organization wasn't exactly the most friendly bunch, and, if the instructions he himself had received were any indication, they were far from concerned about collateral damage.

The monitor of Mr. Krabs's PC had automatically shut itself down, but the computer itself was on. This wasn't much of a clue, though - if Alex was at the Krusty Krab at all, it was no wonder that he would take at least a quick look through the computer. Spongebob fired the display back up; the first thing he checked was Mr. Krabs's browser history, in the timeframe of about six months ago. While he didn't find any history of eBay browsing, there were a few links that seemed likely enough to be what he was looking for - and sure enough, when he clicked them, Spongebob was greeted with only a blank screen. Still nothing.

Getting back to business, Spongebob began rooting through any windows that had been left open. Of particular note was a file explorer window - the directory contained a few dozen text files, but attempting to open or move any one of them resulted in a prompt for a password. Try as he might, this was information Spongebob wasn't getting his hands on.

Some time later, with both his physical and digital sweeps seeming to be resounding failures, Spongebob made his way back to the office's entrance. He had been undeniably thorough; he had checked every open window in the PC, the browser history, all of Mr. Krabs's e-mail folders, the Recycle bin, and even all the network locations he could get access to.

Spongebob left the office somewhat disappointed, but unsurprised. He had done his best, and the chances that Mr. Krabs had left a trace were slim from the start. Little did he know, there was a single, critical point he had missed. But really, in the twenty-first century, who could blame him for forgetting to check if there was a floppy disk in the computer's drive?


Trying to keep the register quiet at the same time as trying to get it open was no small feat. His spirit near its breaking point, Scooter thought of all the times that he had beaten the machines.

The mysterious figure wasn't at the library when he returned the day after his experience with the password - and a good thing, too, he had thought; he didn't need any of that Mr. Robot shit in his life - and no password ever again "appeared" in his mind that directly since that first time, but the seeming sixth sense he had developed for breaking into machines remained as powerful as ever. Exploits and backdoors started to come naturally to Scooter, and whether it was accessing a file on a computer or getting a second snack from a vending machine, he always found a way to get where he wanted to go.

The task before him now was a bit of a different animal from what he was used to. Historically, Scooter didn't have to worry about much else other than getting the machine to do what he wanted it to do, when he wanted it to do it. But given the precarious nature of his current situation, there were a few more things on Scooter's mind; while he was fairly confident he could open the drawer now, doing so would make the tell-tale sound of a transaction going through. On the off chance that his position was still unknown, he had to be gentle with this one and just barely tease the drawer open, or find out some way to disable the bell while the register was still closed.

Back at the library, on the other hand, Scooter was free to explore the limits of his new abilities with free reign. For a while, he consumed the books on technology at a faster rate than ever, hoping to uncover some sort of clue about the strange phenomenon he was experiencing. He kept hacking all the while, exploring first to the boundaries of his library administrator account, and then beyond.

While it was inevitable that Scooter would eventually grow out of the limited environment the library's network provided, he spent a long time establishing and pushing its limits. In the same way that the physical network of shelves and books had provided him comfort for so long, the library's computer network soon felt just as much like a home for Scooter as the pages ever did. He started out checking the library's back orders for new inventory, then moved on to monitoring the late fees of every Bikini Bottom citizen with a library card. By the end of the week, he had his eye on the e-mails and instant messages of the library's entire staff.

It would be quite some time before Scooter's talents for not only computers, but also the unique skillset sought after by the Sciurideans, would go noticed. Until then, he was free to explore creatively and enjoy the fundamental pleasure that came along with discovering a new frontier. At the same time, Scooter became familiar with the melancholy of leaving something you love behind. His last hack at the library was one he remembered well, for reasons not entirely sentimental.

This was a job he had been planning for days. To augment their microfilm archive, the Bikini Bottom public library had recently began constructing digital backups of every newspaper edition ever printed in the town. Naturally, water damage and simple negligence had left a handful of gaps in the records, but there was a particular missing paper that tickled the part of Scooter's brain that had guided him in his activities thus far. There was evidence throughout the library's database and file system indicating that the corresponding microfilm did exist, or at least had at some point, but the digital copy had been intentionally deleted not long after it was initially created. And they were shockingly thorough - it seemed that the files had been wiped clean without a trace. The best Scooter could come up with was a date, a few photo captions (but not the photos themselves), and a headline - Tragic Massacre Shakes Rock Bottom Community; Assailant Still at Large. He couldn't remember hearing of such an event on television, but Scooter's intuition told him this was a very significant story. Unfortunately, that was where the trail went cold.

That had been one of the very few jobs Scooter came away from without what he wanted, and he'd be damned if he let a simple cash register join those ranks. He jostled the machine gently but with purpose, letting the tumblers find their homes within the lock. And then, slowly and silently, a crack appeared between the tray and the rest of the register.

Before he had a chance to further ply those ever-more-tantalizing depths, the office door swung open and shut again. "There's nothing in there. Any luck on your end?"

"Kitchen's clean." The voice came from just over Scooter' head, through the gap between the kitchen and checkout counter. Cowering in the darkness afforded by the cloud cover outside and the shadows of the boat, Scooter was thankful that he was just barely unseen. "Guess we missed him. Don't go thinking you're off the hook, though, there will be other chances."

"Trust me, as long as I'm stuck with you and your cronies, 'off the hook' is the last phrase I'd use to describe myself." With that, the two sets of footsteps reconvened in the lobby and headed towards the front door. Somehow, Scooter was safe! "Back to your base, then?"

As the door opened, one set of steps stopped, then the other. "Yeah, you go on back, but come to think of it, hand me your weapon. I'm going to go take care of Scooter. No sense letting this whole excursion go to waste."