2 months later

Walter pulled on his lab coat and looked in the small mirror he kept on his desk. His hair was still wind-teased from the jetpack ride an hour ago. He made a futile attempt to tame his messy locks but soon gave up. Shrugging to himself, he opened his pack and pulled out the invention he'd been working on for a while. It was a fidget spinner. To activate it, you would press the finger grips together and whisper a code word programmed into the spinner's memory. Then you would spin it hard and throw it, Frisbee-like, at someone who needed to be incapacitated. The spinner, at the touch of body heat, was supposed to reconfigure into exceptionally thin, but unbreakable handcuffs. This was the part Walter was having trouble with. If the fidget wasn't sensitive enough to the body heat, it would bounce of the person, a regular fidget spinner. But if it was too sensitive, it would reconfigure while the spy was still speaking the code word, and handcuff them. The button that deactivated the handcuffs using fingerprint recognition wasn't where a person could reach it, so the spy would be stuck. Walter was working on finding a happy medium between the two levels of sensitivity.

He took out his mini screwdriver and opened up the control panel on the back. Pulling two wires tighter with his tweezers, he tied them together and snipped the ends. That should make it more compact, leaving more room for the more refined sensor he had ordered offline. Walter disconnected the old sensor, removed the new one from its packaging, and was working on installing it, when a large crash occurred on the other side of his cubicle office.

"Sorry, sorry!" a girl's voice shouted from the other side. Walter looked down, dismayed. The crash had startled him, making it so he jerked the tiny grey sensor off the spinner, and somewhere in the room. It was the exact same shade of grey as the floor was, so Walter got down on his hands and knees for what looked like a long search for a pinhead-sized grey cube. A pair of feet clad in lime green sneakers appeared in front of him. "What are you doing?" the same voice said.

"Don't come in here!" Walter told her.

"What? Why?"

"I lost something very small and fragile when that crash happened, and if I don't find it, I won't be able to finish my invention. If someone steps on it, the invention will be delayed for another week! I'm already late." The girl knelt next to him.

"I'll help, then. It's my fault anyway." Walter looked up and found himself looking directly at her face. He felt his cheeks grow a little warm. She was definitely attractive. Her hair was a similar shade of brown to his, but with small streaks of blond close to the roots. It fell to the middle of her shoulders. She wore glasses with tiny birds on the frames. Her eyes were a jewel-blue, with tiny specks of a darker blue near the edge of the iris and the pupil. She had a round and cheery face. She wasn't chubby, but she wasn't stick -thin like he was. She was somewhere in the middle, he decided.

" A-Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yeah, totally. I knocked it on to the floor. I should help get it up. What does it look like?"

" Well, it's a tiny grey cube about the size of a pin's head."

"Whoof." She got onto her hands and knees and started combing the floor. "This will take some time."

"Tell me about it." There was silence for a couple of minutes before Walter attempted to make small talk. "What did you do to make the crash?" he asked.

"Oh." She laughed. "I knocked my computer off my desk." Walter's expression made her laugh harder. "Don't worry, it's not broken. I'm exceptionally clumsy, so technology had to come up with a bullet-proof computer for me. I'm not in technology, I'm in public relations, so I smooth stuff over when messes happen and the government can't come up with a good enough story. That's my talent, making up stories. Ms. Jenkins wanted me to stay with technology for a few days before I move to the upper levels. She said I could probably learn something from a Walter Beckett about patience and kindness. I almost failed my interview, because I have a bit of a fiery temper when people are rude or unkind. I'm supposed to go find him today. Do you know where he is?"

Walter smiled. "Actually, I'm Walter Beckett."

The girl smiled back. "Oh, cool! I'm two minutes into my job here, and I break my mentor's life-changing invention. I'm Theo, by the way."

"Theo?"

"Short for Theodora. My parents thought they were getting a boy. They both liked Theodore and didn't want to change the name. Originally, they called me Dora, but that's ugly. When I turned six, my birthday present was getting them to call me Theo instead."

"Smooth."

" I may not be calm about it, but I know how to get what I want." There was silence again, but it was a comfortable one this time. Then Theo sat up on her heels and offered something to Walter. "Is this it?" she asked him. In her hand, she held the sensor. Walter grabbed it and held it up to the light.

"Yup, this is it! Thanks for the help, Theo!"

"No problem. Can I watch you build what you're making? I promise I won't touch. Ms. Jenkins made me swear not to. Her exact words were 'If you ruin any piece of developing technology in this facility, you will be out of here faster than you can say 'Where's a broom?''" Walter snorted. Her impression was pretty spot on.

" 'Course you can. Just give me a little space and don't get your shadow in the light. Also, if you get handcuffed, it's not my fault."

"Handcuffed?"

"I'll explain later."

Walter put on his goggles, and began where he left off, attaching the sensor in six different places for a good hold on the inside. Spies were generally on the run a lot, so it was best to make their gadgets durable. He then replaced the plate that covered up the wiring, and screwed the fingergrip on top of it, hiding the fidget's awesome secret. "Ok," he said. "This will be my fault."

"What do you mean?" Theo started to back away.

Walter pressed the fidget spinner's grip together, whispered "Unity.", spun the fidget and threw it at Theo.

It hit her wrist and separted into two parts that slithered across her arms, secured themselves into thin metal wristbands, and then magnetically pulled her wrists together, creating transportable and durable handcuffs. Theo struggled, trying to pull the deceivingly thin bracelets apart.

"That won't work," Walter told her. "Those bracelets can withstand the pull of 1000 pounds." Theo stopped pulling and looked at Walter. For a split second, he thought she was angry. Then her face broke into a wide smile

"This is sick! When do these start production? I want one to subdue my nosy neighbors the next time they try to see how many lawn chairs I bought for my backyard!" Walter thought.

"I don't think you can get one. The tech here is strictly limited to spies. I'm really sorry." He was. At least his invention had impressed her so thoroughly. She walked over and nudged him with her shoulder.

"Hey, I didn't mean it. These are cool, but I wouldn't want to be hauled to the police for handcuffing an eighty-year-old to a fence. Speaking of, can you undo me now?"

Walter jumped. "Oh yeah, of course," He lifted her left wrist and located a small button on the side of the handcuffs. He pressed it. "Fingerprint authorized," a robotic voice chirped. The handcuffs fell onto the ground and reformed into the fidget spinner. Walter knelt down to pick up the spinner, and found himself looking at Theo's lime-green sneakers that he had previously noticed. "Nice shoes," he said. Theo looked down.

"Hey thanks! Lots of people wear really boring shoes. I like to wear brightly colored shoes. When you see me walking through a crowd, you can see the bright colors through everyone else's blues, greys, browns, and blacks."

"That's super cool. My inventions are all brightly colored, too. I think color makes the world a better place." Theo's face lifted.

"That's a great way of putting it." She rubbed her freed wrists, like she was a bit uncomfortable. "Can I ask you something?"she said.

"You just did," Walter joked.

"Ha. That's true." She looked less uncomfortable, just thoughtful. "How old are you? What I mean is, when Ms. Jenkins told me to find a Walter Beckett, I was kind of expecting an old guy who was really experienced with his job and had a whole bunch of helpful wise adages to get me through life without blowing up at people every five seconds. But instead I find out you're a child genius! It was a bit of a shock to me."

"I get it. I'm 18 years old. Graduated from MIT 3 years ago, and took the last three years to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. A couple months ago, I got this sticky note on my door with a phone number to text. It sounds stupid, but I did it. It turned out to be H.T.U.V. They had read about me in an old newspaper, and they wanted me to apply. So I did. I got an interview, blew up a Rubik's cube in Ms. Jenkin's face, and she offered me a job!" Walter finished his narrative with a deep breath in.

"A Rubik's cube? Was it anything like the fidget spinner you just locked around my wrists?" Theo looked incredulous. Walter nodded

"A little, maybe. Both are designed to incapacitate enemies without hurting them or people around them."

Theo looked happy. "That's really cool, you know. Because even though they're trying to hurt people, the bad guys have a reason for doing so. Of course, it isn't always justified, but you get my drift." Walter looked down at his brown loafers.

"Yeah...Cause bad guys are people too."