Chapter 1

Conspirium Warehouse Lot, not far outside New York City
September 17, 2049

"All teams, check in!"

"Waters and Olsen, locked and loaded!"

"Eliot here, Ramirez here!"

"Tui and Willy are good to go."

"This is Coombs, Lee is getting the perimeter ready."

PJ scanned the monitors in front of him. Each screen was a direct feed from the body cams worn by every member of his small but fierce strike team, eight screens in total.

"All right," PJ said, "Lee, we're all waiting on you!"

"Don't worry, this Conspirium outpost is coming down soon enough." Lee's screen showed he was handling a mounted metal turret that came to a point with a satellite dish. The dish was aimed at the warehouse facade. "Firing on my mark," Lee said over the radio comms. "Three, two, one. Fire!"

A red beam of light shot out of the turret with a pew! The laser struck the face of the warehouse, and the building instantly liquified and melted like a chocolate bar under a high-powered lamp heater.

"It's a hit!" Lee whooped.

PJ applied his finger against his earpiece. "All strike teams, go, go, GO!"

Thousands of gallons of brown liquid flushed across the warehouse lot, carrying everything in its wake. Furniture, crates, desks and chairs, people sloshing and splashing to get their heads above the flood. PJ's team emerged from their hiding spots to charge into the pandemonium, their firearms set to stun, efficiently hitting their targets' bodies with every shot. The watery slush spread and the flood lost power, and the people who hadn't been hit yet climbed to their feet and ran the other direction―only to find themselves flanked by another strike team member and stunned.

Those who were hit by the stunners discovered the "bullets" didn't penetrate, but only delivered a series of sharp, electric impulses, causing the recipient to convulse violently and drop to the ground, immobilized. In seconds, this fate had befallen two-thirds of the Conspirium members who had been washed out, the agents bearing down on the rest.

One of the last Conspirium terrorists still on his feet had ducked and dodged out of sight long enough to make it to a rack of rifles that had been flipped over in the deluge. He found a sophisticated looking machine large enough to hide himself behind and cradled the weapon in his arms, scanning his surroundings.

Eliot raised his barrel toward an exposed man who was crawling away with his pants around his ankles. Apparently, his final peaceful moments had been spent sitting on the porcelain throne when the ambush had begun. With a smirk, Eliot pulled the trigger and watched the man wriggle and writhe.

"I didn't expect to have a stakeout with a guy who literally has his 'stake' out," Eliot chuckled, making sure his body cam got a good look at his work. It cost him when the man with a rifle jumped out and raised his barrel to aim.

"Eliot! Watch out!" Ramirez dove to shove her partner out of harm's way. The bullet lodged into her calf as she and Eliot hit the ground. Ramirez grabbed her leg and cried out in agony.

"Ramirez!" PJ called out, helplessly removed from the situation. "Are you all right? Eliot, get her out of there!"

Eliot rolled, with Ramirez in his arms, behind an overturned table just as more bullets streaked past him.

"I'm fine!" Ramirez snarled, pushing Eliot off of her. "Don't read anything into this," she added, holding her leg with one hand, jabbing a finger in his chest with the other. "I saved your life because you're my partner! Out of professional obligation, you hear? I still don't like you, and I still won't go out with you!"

"Oh, c'mon!" Eliot said, before popping up from cover to put two stunners in the man's chest. He turned back to Ramirez. "You literally just took a bullet for me! I think that the lady-like thing to do would be to accept my offer to take you out to dinner. It's the least I could do to thank you for saving my life!"

"I said no!"

"At least a drink?"

At that moment, the comms crackled noisily. "All clear," Tui's husky voice announced.

"Olsen," PJ said, "Ramirez needs medical."

"On it," Olsen answered.

"I'm fine!" Ramirez repeated herself. "It's just a flesh wound, I could still kick the crap out of any of you with this leg."

PJ flipped a switch and the monitors folded away behind a wall. He opened a door, and the invisible van he had been working from gave away its faint outline when he and the rest of its innards appeared into view across the street. He shut the door, and the optical illusion readjusted and instantly corrected itself, and the automobile vanished once more.

PJ the Platypus was the spitting image of Perry, his fa―well, it was more complicated than that. The world's first cloned platypus supersoldier, he was trained at the OWCA Academy before joining the Secret Service upon graduating with top marks. Just a few brief months ago, President Isabella Flynn had set him up over a task force charged with finding the secret organization known as the Conspirium and bringing them to justice.

Walking up to inspect the scene, PJ didn't bother trying to avoid the leftover reddish-brown puddles of slurry, indifferently splashing through it like it wasn't there. He checked each of the Conspirium prisoners he passed, making sure they weren't hurt badly. "Every Conspirium member captured, zero casualties, how's Ramirez's leg?"

Olsen gave him the thumbs up. A fresh strip of gauze was wrapped up and down her calf.

"Good work, team," PJ summed up. "Now let's load 'em up and get 'em outta here."

A hovercraft the size of a Boeing was approaching. PJ organized his crew as they arrested everyone they had stunned and moved them on to the ship, which had set down where the warehouse used to be. While Olsen continued his checkup on Ramirez, the rest of his team did the hard work of hauling every limp body up the ramp. Tui and Willey, the big guys, were strong enough to carry two at a time. They had detained twenty-five Conspirium prisoners by the time they were done. Other government workers who had arrived on board the ship were inspecting the warehouse supplies the Conspirium had been holding here, cataloging and acquisitioning them as they went.

All in all, it was a successful raid. There was only one thing missing: Suzy Johnson. According to their intel, she should have been here. She slipped away once again. PJ oversaw the final cleanup and readied his team for transport back to Washington, knowing that without her, they still didn't have any real leads.

Ramirez was able to walk to her seat, albeit with a pronounced limp, and strap herself in unassisted. She would take her muscle tissue regenerators before bed and sleep the healing off, then be good as new in the morning. Ramirez was the only woman on PJ's strike team, and her gritty attitude helped her keep ahead of all the boys.

Next to her was Eliot, as usual. PJ worried about assigning them as partners at first, then he simply realized that Eliot flirted this much with every girl he came in contact with. Eliot considered himself the funniest, handsomest, and smartest person in the world. PJ did have to give him credit for being a good soldier, even if his ego tended to take up the entire room.

Buckled across from them were Olsen and Waters. They were the newest additions to his team. Both were dependable, quietly doing their jobs and obeying every order without question―the ideal soldiers. All PJ knew about Waters was that his only daughter was mentally handicapped. According to his file, she was bound to a wheelchair; couldn't speak, couldn't eat, couldn't understand words. He never spoke about what happened. As for Olsen, PJ knew even less about him. He knew he was Catholic, and if Eliot's gossip could be trusted, he was also apparently a good singer.

In the back were Williams and Tuitavuki. Both were at least six-foot-six and pushing three hundred pounds of solid muscle. Although race didn't mean much to PJ other than that it was a subject to be treated with sensitivity around humans, Willy was black and Tui was polynesian. They had been best friends since college, where they met as roommates while playing on the football team. How they both wound up working as field agents for the CIA, and as partners for that matter, PJ couldn't tell. It only drove home the fact that they seemed truly inseparable.

That left Coombs and Lee. Coombs was actually born deaf, and received implants that let him hear. His unique skill for lip reading had come in handy on a recon mission when their listening tech had failed. Speaking of tech, Lee was the one in charge of that. He was the only one on the team who seemed to know how Phineas and Ferb's equipment worked, or who could fix it if it broke. It was only because of Phineas and Ferb's inventions that they had come this far in tracking the Conspirium, PJ knew. If it wasn't for the help of the two greatest scientists and engineers in history, they would have spent the last two months chasing ghosts and shadows.

With a jolt, the hover plane lifted off, taking the team home. Coombs and Lee finally sat down and buckled themselves in.

"Everybody up to get drinks and celebrate when we get back?" Eliot asked.

They all nodded their assent.

"How about you, boss?"

PJ hesitated. "I have a lot of work to do," he equivocated.

"Oh, come on!" Eliot whined. "You literally never celebrate with us! C'mon, this was the biggest bust we've had! You've gotta let loose and have some fun every once in a while, you know!"

With a shake of his head, PJ gave up. "Okay, you're right. This team deserves a little R&R."

"Whoo!" Eliot elbowed Ramirez, who flinched slightly as she pulled a bill out of her pocket and begrudgingly handed it to him. PJ rolled his eyes.

The short flight ended and the bay doors opened up a view of an underground bunker. They disembarked quickly, taking the path through the maze of metal hallways they knew well enough to navigate in the dark. PJ's men parted to hit the showers. Ramirez sighed with relief to put some distance between herself and Eliot.

"Why do I have to be his partner?" she asked PJ as they walked. "It feels like I'm constantly babysitting him. Literally." She mimicked the way he accented his favorite word.

"Well, you are the only one he listens to," explained the platypus.

"Yeah, only because he hopes I'll give him a kiss if he does." She turned to go to the ladies' room. "If I end up shooting him one of these days, consider it your fault."

PJ stopped by his workstation to glance at the report on what they found at the warehouse. The conclusion the government scientists who had analyzed the Conspirium's confiscated tools, equipment, and parts had come to was that at least some work had been done at the warehouse on trying to replicate a time machine. They had also detected trace amounts of C4, indicating that explosives had been stored there recently. The other most notable impounds were various weapons, though there weren't enough of those to arm more than a small platoon at best. The good news was that they hadn't found any Phineas and Ferb tech. A few guns and bombs were not nearly as dangerous as that would be in the Conspirium's hands, PJ knew.

He paused a moment to fit the pieces together. What was the Conspirium planning to do with these things? A time machine was concerning, but at least he could be sure they didn't have one yet. Was making another attempt at sabotaging the timeline their plan? Maybe set bombs at a time and place in history that suited the Conspirium's agenda? It did line up with what Suzy Johnson had tried to do before. Or, it could have been the leftovers of an attempt to build a time machine, abandoned after Suzy discovered the one in the Danville Museum. PJ felt he was still missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. If only we had captured Suzy there, he thought.

A notification on his screen caught PJ's eye. Team's headed out to celebrate, you promised you'd come. He reluctantly closed the report and left to go join up with his team.

PJ's personal, platypus-sized flying car followed its automated route while he rested his eyes in his reclined seat. His team had done good work today, PJ was at least pleased with that. He could console himself today that they had done their best. In a job as stressful as his, where every decision could be a matter of national security with millions of lives at stake, that was what kept him treading above the ever rising waters. If he could end the day by looking back on it and knowing he had done his very best, the safety of the world couldn't ask for better than that. Well, it could, but it would have to find someone else for the job.

His flying car parked itself and he stepped out, easily finding the diner his team was meeting at. PJ ignored the strange looks the people passing by gave him, as usual, as he walked through the front door.

A waitress heard the chime from his entrance, then a cross look etched on her face. "Shoo, cat! Get out of here!" She tried to herd him back out the door like a stray.

"First off, I'm not a cat, can't you see this?" He pointed at his backside. "Does this look like a cat's tail to you?"

The waitress wore a startled look, like she'd seen a ghost.

"Yeah, I can talk. Secondly―no, you know what? The talking thing was secondly. Thirdly, I'm with a party, the others should be here by now, so I'd appreciate it if you could show me to their table."

PJ was used to strangers reacting like this. When the waitress didn't move or say anything, he simply walked past her, quickly spotting his team at the bar. "Thanks," he said with an insincere air and a wave before pulling himself up onto a stool next to Eliot.

"Hey boss!" Eliot greeted, slapping PJ on the back. "Glad you could make it. So Ramirez and I were wondering―"

"No I wasn't," Ramirez interjected. "Leave me out of this!"

"Okay, Waters and I were wondering how much you could drink. We would have ordered you one already, but, then we figured, you know what? Even a couple ounces would be like drinking a gallon for a playpus! Literally!" Eliot laughed at himself loudly enough for everyone in the diner to hear.

PJ smirked in spite of himself. It was true, he rarely could finish even a glass of lemonade. He did not give Eliot the pleasure of a verbal response, however.

A heavyset man in an apron shuffled over to the group, as if to service them. PJ noticed he was looking straight at him in particular. "Excuse me," he said as soon as he had everyone's attention. "We don't allow pets in here." He indicated at PJ.

Eliot, the one who's mouth PJ wanted to keep shut the most at this moment, of course spoke up. "Pet, are you crazy? This is PJ the platypus, ever heard of him? You've probably seen him on the news!"

"It's not wearing a service animal vest, so I'm sorry, but you'll have to take it outside."

"Take it out―did you not hear me?" Eliot's voice started to rise. "He's not a pet, he's a person!"

"Stand down, Eliot," PJ said, "It's no big deal. We can work something out here." He turned to the waiter. "Can we talk to the manager, please?"

"I am the manager."

"Okay, look. I have a government issued I.D." He flashed his badge. "I'm a citizen of the United States. I have every right to be here."

"And I have every right to refuse service to freaky animals. You're scaring my customers."

"Scaring?" PJ said, puffing up now. "Has anybody here said anything about being scared? Has anybody screamed? I didn't see or hear anything!" He looked around the room. Some people were watching them now, others were staring fixedly at their plates.

"Now you're making a scene," the manager said. "I swear I will call the cops if you don't leave."

Eliot stood up and slammed his hands down on the counter. "Who do you think you are? I'll have you know we literally work for the CIA, so calling the cops does not threaten us!"

"Stand down," PJ said again, plopping off his stool. "It's not worth it."

"But boss," Eliot took a step back. "You don't deserve to be treated like this! Right guys?"

"For once, I agree with you," Ramirez said.

"Yeah," Willy nodded, and Tui as well. "Me too."

"It's okay, guys. I am used to not belonging." PJ walked out of the diner before anyone could say another word, got in his car, and immediately lifted off. After a few silent moments alone, he slammed his fist against the door. "This is why I don't like going out for drinks," he grunted.